In August 2013, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Police Officer Spencer Mortensen issued eight warnings to Eric Byron Johnston, telling him to drop the two knives he was holding in the apartment of his friend, Wendy Woods.
When Johnston failed to drop the knives, Mortensen fatally shot him.
Woods had called police to the apartment, saying she was worried Johnston would cut himself after he had been involved in a car accident. Because of the series of events that led to his death, Johnston’s death was initially ruled a “suicide by cop” and no charges were filed against Mortensen.
A similar situation occurred in New Mexico in November 2013, when suspected child molester Robert Garcia refused to put down what officer Peter Romero described as a small black pistol. Romero said he had no choice but to fire at Garcia.
It turned out that the pistol was actually a pellet gun, and Garcia’s family reported that he had been acting suicidal ever since the state began investigating him for allegedly molesting a six-year-old. Garcia lived, but he had not intended to, police say, pointing to a handwritten note in Garcia’s trunk that read, “Thank you officer.”
Although some try to kill themselves with pills or weapons, others turn to other people, like law enforcement officials, to end their lives. This practice is known as law enforcement-forced-assisted suicide or “suicide by cop” — a term used to describe police-involved shootings in which it is believed that a subject intentionally and consciously engages in life-threatening behavior that will ultimately force police officers to respond with deadly force.
According to the American Association of Suicidology, those who do try to have police shoot and kill them often want to die, but don’t want to kill themselves. How often suicide-by-cop incidents occur every year in the United States is not known. The national data regarding police shootings in general has been called “remarkably thin,” as only the deaths of police officers killed in the line of duty are published every year.
But even if there was information on exactly how many Americans were killed by law enforcement officials each year, Anthony Pinizzotto, a former FBI forensic psychologist who has extensively studied suicide by cop, says, “There is still no uniform definition of suicide by cop.
“There are no criteria by which to judge whether it’s suicide by cop, and there are no strategies to offer law enforcement to say this is how you go about investigating a suicide by cop.”
Based on news reports and conflicting estimates by criminal justice experts on how often suicide by cop incidents occur in the U.S., it seems Pinizzotto may have a point. For example, in the New York Daily News, one unidentified expert reported that between 20 to 40 such incidents occur each year, while Dr. James Drylie, executive director of the school of criminal justice at Kean University in New Jersey, said he found there are about 400 cases of justifiable police homicide in the U.S. each year.
Sean Joe, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan who studies suicide, said the discrepancy is partly due to differences in how dangerous law enforcement perceives a subject to be.
“Just because a subject displays aggression toward the police, doesn’t necessarily mean he has the intent to die,” Joe said.
Detective Sgt. Don Hull, who has been a hostage negotiator with the Oklahoma City Police Department for more than 20 years, agrees. “If you get a true suicide by cop, there is no negotiating with them. I get a gut feeling and realize, ‘This guy is going to make us shoot him.’”
Hull said that in his 20 years of service he had not seen any more than five “true” suicides by cop.
Still, there are several law enforcement officials who argue that suicide by cop incidents accounted for 11 percent or more of all officer-involved shootings between 1987 and 1997 — in other words, it’s much more common than people realize.
Officers who see suicide by cop as a more prevalent issue also stress that police officers often feel their lives are in jeopardy, as many of these predominantly male individuals not only have suicidal tendencies, but also suffer from untreated mental illnesses, abuse alcohol or drugs, have a history of domestic violence, and are in possession of a weapon or a toy that looks like a weapon. They also argue that in these situations, their training instructs them to shoot.
That “just shoot” mentality has been a great concern for many police reform advocates, as well as Audrey Honig, the chief psychologist for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. She believes one solution to the suicide by cop phenomenon involves teaching officers how to handle persons who may be suicidal, or those suffering from mental health issues, in a non-violent manner.
“Law enforcement are so busy fighting fires that they don’t get out in front to prevent the fire,” Honig said.
“When you show them something new, sometimes their initial reaction is just to jerk back and say no. It’s a political thing that needs to be changed,” Honig argued, especially since it would help reduce the financial sums departments are forced to pay after officer-involved shootings occur, and improve community relations.