Suicide by cop
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Suicide-by-cop is a suicide method in which someone deliberately acts in a threatening way towards a law enforcement officer, with the main goal of provoking a lethal response, such as being shot to death. Such a person typically feels despondent and hopeless, but for whatever reason, doesn't want to take his or her own life directly. For example, the person might want his relatives to be able to claim insurance money, which would be more difficult to claim if the death was a true suicide. Alternately, the suicidal person, having no personal access to firearms and wishing to avoid methods of slow, uncertain and relatively more painful deaths, exploits a police officer's requirement to carry firearms. Another possible situation could be that the suicidal person may have religious or moral reservations for not taking his or her own life, therefore provoking a police officer to do it instead.
Suicide-by-cop can be said to be a modern version of amok, a suicide method where someone attacks as many persons as possible until he or she is killed.
The actual act has been described in news accounts from 1981, and scientific journals since 1985, although this particular phrase did not become common until the early 1990s. The phrase seems to have originated in the United States, but also appears in an article in the British newspaper The Guardian, dated May 10, 2003. The report states that a jury in a police-shooting inquest ruled it a suicide because on the scene, the subject reportedly stated "better get your guns out lads, I'm coming out" and a suicide note was later found. Some say that the 1976 death of Mal Evans was an example of this phenomenon. Some historians believe that Giuseppe Zangara, the man who killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak in an attempt to assassinate then President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, might have been attempting suicide by police.
Occasionally, a person seeking to provoke a violent reaction may instead attack known criminals or others who habitually use deadly force. The motivation is similar, but may additionally include a desire to cause trouble for the shooter.
Indicators include suspects that point an unloaded or non-functioning gun (such as a toy gun or starter's pistol) at officers. Suicide notes are obvious indicators, if present. Many law enforcement training programs have added sections to specifically address handling these situations.
The act has been featured in a number of motion pictures, notably in Falling Down (1993, starring Michael Douglas), and much earlier in the 1967 Jean-Pierre Melville film, Le Samouraï also the karaoke related movie Duets and episodes of the CBS television drama Without a Trace and NBC drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Mafia don John Abruzzi chooses this act when he is surrounded by law enforcement agents attempting to recapture him in "First Down", an episode of the TV series Prison Break. It was also featured in the novel The Outsiders, as well as a particularly convoluted variant in Se7en. Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid, by Tibor Fischer also contains a short story about an S.B.C. The act was also used in the soap opera General Hospital to kill off the character of Zander Smith.
The act has even served as the climax of a comic book: The Spectacular Spider-Man (Volume 1) #136 (March 1988), in which a deranged villain calling himself the "Sin-Eater" brandishes an unloaded shotgun at police and is gunned down in response.
Similar phrases include suicide-by-police, and officer- (or police-) assisted suicide. A veteran Canadian police officer researching the topic for his Master's and Ph.D. theses used the phrase Victim-Precipitated Homicide. (Parent 2004)
An episode of the FX show The Shield featured a role-reversal of this method, with Officer Lowe, unable to cope with his closet homosexuality, trying to goad a suspect who fled into shooting him. (The suspect, confused, simply hands his gun to Lowe.)
In a particularly interesting variant, the film The Recruit features Al Pacino's character committing suicide by CIA-agent, while Pacino himself is a former CIA agent now working against the Agency. However, whether or not Pacino knows his gun is empty is left somewhat ambiguous.
Sometimes the term suicide by cop is used ironically,[citation needed] hinting that the victim was purposefully killed by police, under circumstances which could lead to a plausible defence for the officer(s). The real motives implied are generally callousness to end the situation as quickly as possible, malice to punish the offender beyond what is allowed by law, irrational fear of the suspect (often modified by a difference in race), or zealousness by an inexperienced member of the force.
[edit] Examples
- Aramoana massacre
- Charles Whitman, the University of Texas tower shooter
[edit] Literature
- Lindsay, M. & Lester D. 2004, Suicide by Cop: Committing Suicide by Provoking Police to Shoot You. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company. ISBN 0-89503-290-2
- Hinton S. E. 1983, The Outsiders, London: Puffin. ISBN 0-00-672225-3 One of the main characters, Dallas Winston, commits suicide by cop.
- 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.
