NCJ Number
193578
Date Published
2001
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This study created a typology of suicide-by-police (a person forcing police to shoot him or her by engaging in threatening behavior) by separating 143 such incidents from a database of 174 police shooting incidents.
Abstract
To classify an incident as "suicide-by-cop" (SBC), the subject must have behaved in a way that seemed intended to provoke the police to shoot. Specifically, this required either deliberately exposing oneself while posing a threat to police or bystanders; or, in a standoff situation, knowingly forcing police to attack while harming or threatening to harm hostages or bystanders. The 143 SBC incidents consisted of three categories: "direct confrontations," in which potentially suicidal subjects instigated attacks on police; "disturbed interventions," in which potentially suicidal subjects took advantage of police intervention; and "criminal interventions," in which subjects preferred death to submission. These three basic categories of SBC were subdivided into nine different types. The study found that "suicide intervention," a subtype of "disturbed interventions," was most likely to involve a successful use of less-than-lethal force by police. In such a case, the subject may be overtly suicidal or may react to the police arrival by becoming suicidal, but appears hesitant and ambivalent. This research shows that clear differences exist among SBC incidents, such that any generalizations about such incidents, especially for training purposes, must be made with caution. 1 table