ShareThisA new study suggests that suicide-by-cop, a phenomenon in which a suspect provokes an officer into using deadly force, is far more common than previously thought.
In the March issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, researcher Kris Mohandie reports that 36 percent of the more than 700 officer-involved-shootings he studied could be classified as suicide-by-cop.
"It appears that there is a high degree of desperation, hopelessness, impulsivity, self-destructiveness, and acting out among subjects encountered by the police in such an event," he wrote.
Often, local police agencies don't make distinctions in classifying such shootings. Researchers, though, are trying to do just that.
"Here's a guy that wants to die," explained John Violanti, a former New York state trooper and current professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. "And he doesn't know how to do it, but he knows that if he threatens police, they're going to kill him."
James J. Drylie, a former law enforcement officer and a professor at Kean University in Union, N.J.,who, with Violanti, authored "Copicide," an examination of the phenomenon, agreed. "They're going to push the envelope, pushing and pushing and pushing."
Unlike Mohandie, Drylie and Violanti exclude shootings in which the suspect was known to be mentally ill.
That a suspect's behavior was voluntary -- that he knowingly precipitated the response -- is important in making a distinction, Drylie said.
The other factors are whether the suspect exhibited a threat of deadly force, be it real (by, say, wielding a firearm) or perceived, and whether the suspect communicated a suicide wish.
Drylie and Violanti estimate roughly 1 in 10 officer-involved-shootings fit their criteria, a frequency far lower than Mohandie's.
Most suicide-by-cop suspects exhibit similar traits, experts agree. The suspects are typically white men in their 30s or 40s who are unwed.
They usually act out a script that ends in their death, Violanti said.
Whether elaborately planned or crafted on the spot, the script is made to provoke a reaction from a responding officer.
"These people are better planners than a normal suicide," Violanti notes.
But does the suicide-by-cop distinction really matter? Isn't a man with a gun a man with a gun, regardless of his state of mind?
"Legally it makes no difference what the suspect's intent was at the time of the event," Michelle Batten, a spokeswoman for the Collier County, Fla., Sheriff's Office, wrote in an e-mail. The county recently has seen three cases of police shootings that could be classified suicides-by-cop.
Instead, she said, so long as the suspect presents a lethal threat to anyone on scene and the officer determines deadly force is the only way to stop that threat, the shooting is justified.
It's not a difficult standard to meet.
"The reality is if a person is really intent on making an officer shoot them, they can do it," said Patrick Flahive, assistant director of the Southwest Florida Institute for Public Service, which trains future law enforcement officers.
At the institute, students learn to recognize mental illness and the likelihood that someone may be trying to provoke them into a fatal shooting. Talking is important, Flahive said: keep the suspect talking and you keep him from making impulsive decisions.
Instructors also train investigators in recognizing the signs of a suicidal suspect.
Yet, in the heat of the moment, when a weapon -- or something that looks like it -- is produced, don't expect an officer to search for signs the person is suicidal, Flahvie said.
"There's all kinds of little things that tell that tale later," the instructor explained. "But often it's unrealistic to expect officers to recognize those things at that moment."
Mohandie's study found that a suicide-by-cop suspect is in fact more dangerous to others than a suspect who is not suicidal. In one out of every three cases he studied, either a bystander or an officer was hurt.
"(A) suicidal individual poses a greater risk of homicide or at least violence toward others, than a non-suicidal individual," he concluded.
Preparation can still pay off, said Cherie Castellano, the founder of Cop 2 Cop, a New Jersey hotline for troubled officers and the wife of a police officer in the state.
"All the research shows that if an officer feels like he was in control of the shooting ... they have less psychological problems," she said. "If they feel like they were out of control, like the perp or suspect does something bizarre ... they feel (bad) afterwards."
In short, they feel used.
But such judgments often come in hindsight. The moment of decision is a blur.
Tunnel vision quickly sets in during any officer-involved-shooting situation, Castellano said. Officers tighten up.
Castellano and Drylie give seminars to officers on recognizing suicide-by-cop traits.
She said one officer who attended a seminar later told her he was in a suicide-by-cop situation soon after. The man ran at him with a knife, he said, and the officer was able to shoot and wound him.
"He was so prepared that he felt like he could focus and really perform well," she said.
(Steven Beardsley is a reporter for the Naples Daily News in Florida.)
