Justin was a 17-year-old from Cazenovia, N.Y., a small lakeshore village 30 miles southeast of Syracuse. Justin had no criminal history and no record of mental health issues. Yet, according to ABC World News, early in the afternoon one Thursday in 2011, Justin made an anonymous 911 call from Canastota Village, identifying himself as being involved in an armored car robbery.
There was no armored car robbery that day.
The police attempted to stop the car, but Justin fled, leading two local police officers and a state trooper sergeant on a four-mile chase to a dead-end road. When the teenager finally got out of the car, he pointed a black gun at the officers. The officers fired 10 shots at Justin. Four found him, killing him.
Justin’s “gun” was a pellet gun.
The state police classified the case “suicide-by-cop.”
“[From] everything that we know, we would be able to use that term suicide-by-cop,” Lt. Troy D. Little of the New York State Police told ABC News.
For many individuals in this society, the idea of self-inflicted death is repugnant. They may believe that they do not have the strength to end their own lives, or they have religious prohibitions against taking their own lives, or they may believe that death by their own hands does not have the appeal or prestige of more “noble” forms of death. However, when these individuals reach a point where they feel their lives should end, many engage in a form of “suicide-by-proxy” — they create a situation in which they are ultimately killed.
According to a 2009 study published in the Journal of Forensic Science, 36 percent of all police-involved shootings were either attempted or successful suicides-by-cop. The average age of suicide-by-cop victims was 35. Ninety-five percent were male; 41 percent were White. Meanwhile, 77 percent of suicide-by-cop victims were heterosexual and 24 percent were employed at the time of the event. Only 16 percent were known to have attempted suicide before their suicide-by-cop attempt.
Suicide-by-cop is a traumatic event not only for the family and friends of the suicidal individual: It can be destructive to both the involved officer — who must carry the guilt of killing a disturbed man or women — and to the community as a whole. However, for many cases attributed as “suicide-by-cop,” the truth may be far different.
Suicide-by-cop
“So many officers get upset at the fact that they took a life in a script that is not part of the police program,” said David Klinger, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri. “The police program is to use deadly force to protect themselves from criminals, bad guys, not to play out somebody’s suicidal fantasy.”
The rate of this disturbing trend seems to be increasing.
On Monday, a West Valley City, Utah man — who had told authorities previously that he wanted to die — entered a police station and pointed a gun at an officer and a clerk. Another officer opened fire on James Ramsey Kammeyer, 39, hitting him twice in the arm. Kammeyer has been released from the hospital and has been charged with attempted homicide, threat of terrorism, aggravated assault and possession of a weapon by a prohibited user.
Kammeyer had told officers in December that he wanted them to kill him, as he is a registered sex offender and his wife is using this fact to take sole custody of their kids. Kammeyer pleaded guilty to child sex abuse in 1999, which by Utah statute makes him ineligible to own or carry a firearm.
In the recent incident, Kammeyer’s targets were behind a bulletproof partition. Kammeyer repeatedly asked for an officer to meet him in the lobby. Because Kammeyer was acting suspicious, the officer behind the glass ordered Kammeyer to present his hands. It was at this time that Kammeyer pulled out the handgun.
“It’s hard for the cop on the scene to make any determinations with respect to mental health when facing a potentially life-threatening encounter,” said Frank Scafidi, director of public affairs for the National Insurance Crime Bureau. “All of their training is to protect themselves and others and if faced with an armed situation, a cop might not have the time to evaluate much. Especially if the suspect calls the shots.”
“A person looking to ‘go out’ may be at the end of their road and has contemplated suicide but for some reason, can’t summon the nerve or the will to do the deed themselves,” Scafidi continued.
“Or they may want to end their lives thinking that they will be killed in some dramatic, public fashion rather than taking their life through carbon monoxide poisoning all alone in their garage. Many times these episodes don’t present an actual attempt on a cop’s life (i.e. actually shooting at an officer) but present a circumstance where that is clearly the potential, thus forcing an officer to use deadly force. These situations are most unfortunate in that it’s sad enough that a person is driven to end their life, but choosing a confrontation with the police to do so affects more than the ‘victim’ and their family.”
Brutality disguised as tragedy
In 2009, three separate cases of “suicide-by-cop” involving the New York Police Department (NYPD) caught the nation’s attention. In Queens, an ex-convict with a knife grabbed a parole officer and was shot dead by the police. In Brooklyn, a screaming woman slashed a uniformed police officer inside her apartment and was shot dead. In the Bronx, a man wildly swung at armored police officers with a knife, saying “I don’t care about killing myself.” After an attempt to subdue him with rubber bullets and a Taser, he was shot dead.
In all of these cases, the police used deadly force to stop a suspect. In all of these cases, the officers’ conduct could be interpreted as a use of excessive force. “If a person is so mentally deficient that they could not form intent to commit a crime, then their intent to commit suicide would be questioned,” said James J. Drylie, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Kean University.
Ultimately, “suicide-by-cop” is an after-the-fact descriptor. It can and has been used to describe cases in which it does not adequately explain what actually happened. An example of this is the 2009 case of six officers firing a minimum of 59 shots, in three separate volleys, at a lone man in Chattanooga, Tenn. The man, 32-year-old Alonzo Heyward — who received 43 entry wounds — was considered a “suicide-by-cop” because he had been holding a rifle and allegedly pointed it at the cops from his porch. Heyward was depressed, according to the police, and was seen roaming the neighborhood threatening to kill himself.
“There are men who are feeling desperately lost, unseen and suicidal, who want to go down in a blaze of glory, or at least a blaze that will get them in the headlines,” said Dr. Carole Lieberman, a forensic psychiatrist and author of “Coping With Terrorism: Dreams Interrupted.”
“However, most incidents are actually police brutality, which are after the fact being touted as suicide by cop by the police trying to mount a defense. There is an epidemic of police brutality, which is out of control. There is no reason why cops should not be taught to disarm or maim suspected criminals instead of riddling them with bullets.”
While “suicide-by-cop” represents an instantaneous response by law enforcement to a perceived danger, it can be argued that the proliferation of “suicide-by-cop” lies in a willingness to use deadly force by law enforcement as an acceptable, “one-size-fits-all” response to danger. While no one expects the police to allow a situation to spiral out of control — as a matter of fact, the police have a court-mandated obligation to respond to danger promptly. But no one expects the police to “shoot to kill” when “shooting to stop” would suffice.