Suicide by cop (abbreviated as: SbC^[1]), also known as suicide by police or law-enforcement-assisted suicide,^[2] is a suicide 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^[3] to end their own life.

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 die 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 to provoke law enforcement into killing them. These individuals may commit a crime with the specific intention of provoking a law enforcement response.

The idea of dying by suicide 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.^[4] Some cases are obvious, such as pointing an unloaded or non-functioning gun, such as a toy gun, air gun, airsoft gun, or starter's pistol, 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 officers who shot and killed Charles Whitman, 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."^[5] The 1976 death of Mal Evans, road manager, assistant, and a friend of the Beatles, who aimed an air gun at police and refused to put it down, was theorized as a possible example of this phenomenon.^[6] Some historians believe that Giuseppe Zangara, the man who killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak in a possible attempt to assassinate then President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, might have been attempting suicide by police.^[7] In 2018, Alek Minassian, the perpetrator of the Toronto van attack, 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.^[8]

Recognition and research

The phenomenon has been described in news accounts from 1981,^[9] and scientific journals since 1985.^[9] The phrase has appeared in news headlines since at least 1987.^[10] 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 died by suicide by cop in 2003.^[11]

Some of the first research into suicide by cop was completed by Sgt. Rick Parent of the Delta Police Department. 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."^[12]

The first formally labeled "Suicide by Cop" case in English legal history was a judgment made on May 9, 2003, by the Reverend Dr. William Dolman^[11] while serving as a London coroner between 1993 and 2007.^[13] 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 died by suicide by cop found that^[14]

• 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, a spree shooting that occurred on 13 November 1990 in New Zealand, police shot the suspect dead as he came out of a house firing from the hip and screaming "Kill me!"^[15]
• On 5 May 2005, Peggy Jo Tallas, a bank robber, engaged in a shootout while armed with a toy pistol.^[16]
• In December 2008, 15-year-old Tyler Cassidy was shot and killed by three Victoria Police officers after he threatened them with two large knives and ordered them to shoot him.^[17]
• During March 2011, Chilean businessman and organized criminal Italo Nolli was shot and killed by police after shooting dead two investigative police detectives and hurting another five. He had previously stated to his wife and son that he believed dying in a police shootout would be "dignifying" and that he "would not return to prison".^[18]
• Myron May, a 31-year-old man believing he was a victim of government covert electronic harassment on the line of Cold War era MKUltra and COINTELPRO clandestine US government programs, died by suicide by cop on 20 November 2014 after recording his intentions on tape.^[19]
• 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."^[20]
• In June 2015, 21-year-old Trepierre Hummons, a known gangster with a history of weapons violations, posted his intent to die by suicide by cop on Facebook 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.^[21]
• On 22 October 2015, Anton Lundin Pettersson, the perpetrator of the Trollhättan school stabbing, wrote a message to an online friend an hour before the attack, where he states “I hope those fucking cops aim straight, because I really don't want to survive my rampage.". He also wrote that he expected to be dead within one or two hours and that he hated himself. 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."^[22]
• 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."^[23]
• On 15 September 2017, a 15-year-old Virginia boy, Ruben Urbina, called police and was shot twice after threatening an officer with a crowbar. After calling 911, he made threats of a bomb, hostages, knives and guns, none of which were real. "I called the police… so they can kill me."^[24]
• On August 30, 2018, American actress Vanessa Marquez pleaded with police officers to kill her while pointing a replica gun at them. Officers were unaware the gun was a replica, and they shot her to death in self-defense.^[25][26]

In literary fiction

In To Kill a Mockingbird, 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.^[27]

In The Outsiders, Dallas Winston, a juvenile delinquent, aims an unloaded handgun at police officers with the intent of them shooting him; he is shot dead.