Suicide By Cop
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Suicide by cop or suicide by police is a
suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...
method in which a suicidal individual deliberately behaves in a threatening manner, with intent to provoke a lethal response from a public safety or
law enforcement officer A law enforcement officer (LEO), or peace officer in North American English, is a Public sector, public-sector employee whose duties primarily involve the Law enforcement, enforcement of laws. The phrase can include campaign disclosure specialist ...
.


Overview

There are two broad categories of "suicide by cop". The first is when someone has committed a crime and is being pursued by the police and decides that they would rather commit suicide than be arrested. These people may not otherwise be suicidal but may simply decide that life is not worth living if they are incarcerated and thus will provoke police to kill them. The second version involves people who are already contemplating suicide and who decide that provoking law enforcement into killing them is the best way to act on their desires. These individuals may commit a crime with the specific intention of provoking a law enforcement response. The idea of committing
suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and s ...
in this manner is based on trained procedures of law enforcement officers, specifically the policy on the use of deadly force. In jurisdictions where officials are readily capable of deadly force, often by being equipped with firearms, there are usually set circumstances where they will predictably use deadly force against a threat to themselves or others. This form of suicide functions by exploiting this trained reaction. The most common scenario is pointing a firearm at a police officer or an innocent person, which would be expected to provoke an officer to fire on them. Many variants exist; for example, attacking with a knife or other hand weapon, trying to run an officer or other person over with a car, or trying to trigger a real or presumed explosive device. This concept hinges on the person's state of mind, and their desire to end their own life, which can be difficult to determine post mortem.Pinizzotto, Anthony J.; Davis, Edward F.; Miller III, Charles E. (February 2005). "Suicide by Cop." ''FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin''. 74 (2):8–20 Some cases are obvious, such as pointing an unloaded or non-functioning gun, such as a
toy gun Toy guns are toys which imitate real guns, but are designed for recreational sport or casual play by children. From hand-carved wooden replicas to factory-produced pop guns From Gilroy Gardens and cap guns, toy guns come in all sizes, price ...
, air gun,
airsoft gun Airsoft guns are replica toy guns used in airsoft sports. They are a special type of low-power smoothbore air guns designed to shoot non-metallic spherical projectiles (pb) often colloquially (but incorrectly) referred to as " BBs", which are ...
, or
starter's pistol A starting pistol or starter pistol is a blank handgun that is fired to start track and field races, as well as competitive swimming races at some meets. Starter guns cannot fire real ammunition without first being extensively modified: Blank ...
, at officers, or the presence of a suicide note. Some suspects brazenly announce their intention to die before they act; however, many cases can be more difficult to determine, as some suspects with the desire to die will actually fire live ammunition and even kill people before being killed themselves. Many law enforcement training programs have added sections to specifically address handling these situations if officers suspect that the subject is attempting to goad them into using lethal force.


History

Many modern cases that pre-date the formal recognition of the phenomenon have been identified or speculated by historians as matching the pattern now known as suicide by cop. According to authors Mark Lindsay and David Lester, Houston McCoy, one of the two
Austin Police Department Austin Police Department (APD) is the principal law enforcement agency serving Austin, Texas. As of Fiscal Year 2022, the agency had an annual budget of $443.1 million and employed around 2,484 personnel, including approximately 1,809 officers. T ...
officers who shot and killed
Charles Whitman Charles Joseph Whitman (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was an American mass murderer who became known as the "Texas Tower Sniper". On August 1, 1966, Whitman used knives to kill his mother and his wife in their respective homes, then went to ...
, the " Texas Tower Sniper", believed that Whitman could have shot him and fellow officer Ramiro Martinez, but "he was waiting for them, and wanted to be shot." The 1976 death of
Mal Evans Malcolm Frederick Evans (27 May 1935 – 5 January 1976) was an English road manager and personal assistant employed by the Beatles from 1963 until their break-up in 1970. In the early 1960s, Evans was employed as a telephone engineer, and a ...
, road manager, assistant, and a friend of
the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
, who aimed an air gun at police and refused to put it down, was theorized as a possible example of this phenomenon. Some historians believe that
Giuseppe Zangara Giuseppe Zangara (September 7, 1900 – March 20, 1933) was an Italian immigrant and naturalized United States citizen who attempted to assassinate the President-elect of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on February 15, 1933, 17 ...
, the man who killed
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
mayor
Anton Cermak Anton Joseph Cermak ( cs, Antonín Josef Čermák, ; May 9, 1873 – March 6, 1933) was an American politician who served as the 44th mayor of Chicago, Illinois from April 7, 1931 until his death on March 6, 1933. He was killed by an assassin, ...
in a possible attempt to assassinate then
President-elect An ''officer-elect'' is a person who has been elected to a position but has not yet been installed. Notably, a president who has been elected but not yet installed would be referred to as a ''president-elect'' (e.g. president-elect of the Unit ...
Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
, might have been attempting suicide by police. In 2018, Alek Minassian, the perpetrator of the
Toronto van attack A domestic terrorist vehicle-ramming attack occurred on April 23, 2018, when a rented van was driven along Yonge Street through the North York City Centre business district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The driver, Alek Minassian, targeted ped ...
, claimed to have attempted suicide by cop when apprehended by police after his attack, requesting to be killed and claiming he was armed with a gun, a declaration which was false.


Recognition and research

The phenomenon has been described in news accounts from 1981,Zandt, Clinton R.
Suicide by Cop
." National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.
and scientific journals since 1985. The phrase has appeared in news headlines since at least 1987. It did not become common until the early 2000s. The phrase seems to have originated in the United States, but has also appeared in the UK, where a jury first determined someone committed suicide by cop in 2003. Some of the first research into suicide by cop was completed by Sgt. Rick Parent of the
Delta Police Department The Delta Police Department (DPD) is the police force for the City of Delta, British Columbia, a suburban community in Metro Vancouver with a population of 102,661. As of 2019, the Delta Police Department has an authorized strength of 194 sworn me ...
. Parent's research of 843 police shootings determined that about 50% were victim precipitated homicide. Police defined victim precipitated homicide as "an incident in which an individual bent on self-destruction, engages in life threatening and criminal behavior to force law enforcement officers to kill them."Parent, Richard 2004. "Aspects of Police Use of Deadly Force In North America – The Phenomenon of Victim-Precipitated Homicide," Ph.D. thesis,
Simon Fraser University Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia, Canada, with three campuses, all in Greater Vancouver: Burnaby (main campus), Surrey, and Vancouver. The main Burnaby campus on Burnaby Mountain, located from ...
.
The first formally labeled "Suicide by Cop" case in English legal history was a judgment made on May 9th, 2003 by the Reverend Dr. William Dolman while serving as a London coroner between 1993 and 2007. It set a legal precedent and the judgment, as a cause of death, has been a part of English law since. A 2009 study in the United States of the profiles of 268 people who committed suicide by cop found that * 95% were male and 5% were female * the mean age was 35 for men * 41% of men were Caucasian, 26% Hispanic and 16% African American * 37% of men were single * 29% of men had children * 54% of men were unemployed * 29% of men did not have housing * 62% of men had confirmed or probable histories of mental health issues * 80% of men were armed – of these, 60% possessed firearms (of which 86% were loaded) and 26% possessed knives * 19% feigned or simulated weapon possession * 87% of individuals made suicidal communications prior to and/or during the incident * 36% were under the influence of alcohol.


Examples

* In the
Aramoana massacre The Aramoana massacre was a spree shooting that occurred on 13 November 1990 in the small seaside township of Aramoana, northeast of Dunedin, New Zealand. Resident David Gray killed 13 people including local police Sergeant Stewart Guthrie, o ...
, a
spree shooting A spree killer is someone who commits a criminal act that involves two or more murders or homicides in a short time, in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations wit ...
that occurred on 13 November 1990 in
New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
, police shot the suspect dead as he came out of a house firing from the hip and screaming "Kill me!" * In December 2008, 15-year-old
Tyler Cassidy Tyler Jordan Cassidy was a 15-year-old boy who was killed by Victoria Police officers in Australia in 2008. His death influenced changes in the way Victoria Police respond to people presenting as mentally ill, and in the use of tasers. Shooti ...
was shot and killed by three
Victoria Police Victoria Police is the primary law enforcement agency of the Australian States and territories of Australia, state of Victoria (Australia), Victoria. It was formed in 1853 and currently operates under the ''Victoria Police Act 2013''. , Victo ...
officers after he threatened them with two large knives and ordered them to shoot him. *
Myron May The history of Florida State University dates to the 19th century and is deeply intertwined with the history of education in the state of Florida and in the city of Tallahassee. Florida State University, known colloquially as Florida State and ...
, a 31-year-old man believing he was a victim of government covert
electronic harassment Electronic harassment, electromagnetic torture, or psychotronic torture is a conspiracy theory that malicious actors (often government agents or crime rings) make use of electromagnetic radiation (such as the microwave auditory effect), radar, ...
on the line of
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
era
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and
COINTELPRO COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...
clandestine US government programs, committed suicide by cop on 20 November 2014 after recording his intentions on tape. * On 4 January 2015, a 32-year-old San Francisco man, Matthew Hoffman, staged a standoff with police in the parking lot of an SFPD station. When he brandished the gun, two officers shot him a total of three times. He left a message for the officers on his cell phone, saying: "You did nothing wrong. You ended the life of a man who was too much of a coward to do it himself ... I provoked you. I threatened your life as well as the lives of those around me." * In June 2015, 21-year-old Trepierre Hummons, a known gangster with a history of weapons violations, posted his intent to commit suicide by cop on
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on the same day that a sex offense had been reported against him. He called 9-1-1 and reported he had seen a man acting erratically with a gun. He then shot the responding officer multiple times, mortally wounding him. The next officer to arrive on the scene shot Hummons. Both Hummons and the wounded policeman later died in the hospital. * Anton Lundin Pettersson, the perpetrator of the October 2015 Trollhättan school attack in Sweden, wrote a message to an online friend an hour before the attack, where he says that he expected to be dead within one or two hours, that he hated himself, and hoped that "those fucking cops aim straight, because I really don't want to survive the commotion." Pettersson had a history of mental illness, and a book about the attack with interviews of many people around him states that "during the period before the attack, he wavered between several options; to seek professional help, to kill himself 'normally' or to attack people around him to get killed." * On 28 May 2017, a man in Mississippi suspected of murdering seven of his family members and a police officer told a journalist that by shooting towards police, "Suicide by cop was my intention. I ain't fit to live. Not after what I've done."


In literary fiction

In ''
To Kill a Mockingbird ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' is a novel by the American author Harper Lee. It was published in 1960 and was instantly successful. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. ''To Kill a Mockingbird'' has become ...
'', Tom Robinson, a despondent black man who is imprisoned for a rape he did not commit, is shot 17 times and killed while trying to escape from prison in front of the prison guards.


See also

*
Banzai charge Banzai charge is the term that was used by the Allied forces of World War II to refer to Japanese human wave attacks and swarming staged by infantry units. This term came from the Japanese battle cry , and was shortened to banzai, specificall ...
* Circumcellions *
Consensual homicide Consensual homicide refers to a case when one person kills another, with the consent of the person being killed. Assisted suicide The most common form of consensual homicide is assisted suicide, most commonly as euthanasia, in which terminally ...
*
Lists of killings by law enforcement officers Following are lists of killings by law enforcement officers. * List of killings by law enforcement officers by country ** List of killings by law enforcement officers in Canada ** List of killings by law enforcement officers in China ** List of ...
*
Police brutality Police brutality is the excessive and unwarranted use of force by law enforcement against an individual or a group. It is an extreme form of police misconduct and is a civil rights violation. Police brutality includes, but is not limited to, ...
*
Running amok Amok syndrome is an aggressive dissociative behavioral pattern derived from Malaysia that led to the English phrase, running amok. The word derives from the Malay word , traditionally meaning "an episode of sudden mass assault against people or obj ...
*
Samaritans (charity) Samaritans is a registered charity aimed at providing emotional support to anyone in emotional distress, struggling to cope or at risk of suicide throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, often through its telephone helpline. ...
*
Suicide crisis A suicide crisis, suicidal crisis or potential suicide is a situation in which a person is attempting to kill themselves or is seriously contemplating or planning to do so. It is considered by public safety authorities, medical practice, and eme ...
* Suicide intervention * Suicide prevention


References


Further reading

* *


External links


Results of one study of the phenomenon

Law enforcement suicide prevention resources


* ttp://www.suicidebycop.com An information portal with support resources for Law Enforcement officers {{DEFAULTSORT:Suicide By Cop * Suicide methods