Suicide By Cop

Abstract

This paper tries to analyze the “Suicide by Cop” in a critical way. Suicide by cop is a term coined to represent circumstances in which a person involves in a behavior that creates an obvious risk of fatality. The research describes various factors which are responsible for suicide by cop and tries to describe the overall effect of suicide by cop on cops. The lawsuits associated with the suicide by cop are also discussed in the paper. Various research conducted by different scholars on similar topic are analyzed to get an insight of the topic more thoroughly.

Table of Contents

Introduction4

Discussion5

Potential Indicators of Suicide by Cop6

Classification of Suicide by Cop6

Research Review7

Suicide by Cop- A Cause of Trauma to Police Officials9

Case Studies10

Conclusion11

References13

Annotated Bibliography14

Suicide by Cop; the Provocation of the, Meaning to Provoke

Thesis Statement: Several civilians are killed by police officials every year, a number of whom provoke officers to take their life and use police as an instrument for their suicides. Police officers are needed to be trained to avoid shooting even when it is asked by the person himself.

Introduction

Suicide by Cop is the term used to describe cases in which delinquents or mentally distressed people may deliberately or irresponsibly provoke circumstances in which they try to force policemen to employ lethal or baneful force against them. Otherwise stated, perpetrating or assaying to commit suicide by provoking police to take their life. Jan Baechler who was a French philosopher and suicide researcher termed this sort of suicidal attitude as indirect suicide while Shneidman who classified suicide in to different categories also included this type of suicide in to his categorization, in which a person provoke a police officer to gun down that person by engaging himself in a life-threatening conduct. (Buda B., 2004) The objective of the person is to incite the police officials to a fatal reaction. Three main aspects can differentiate it from other shootings by police; firstly an intention is shown by the person to die, the consequences of the act are understood by the person and the person faces the police officers with such intense manner that the official is constrained to proceed with lethal force. When the people do not want to kill themselves but still want to put their life in to death then they take such stance that police officials are enforced to gun them down. These occurrences are tremendously risky to officers as they know on no account, if the person will seek to take their life too. An unloaded gun is often pointed by suicidal individuals to policemen as they detect the police would take action in self-protection by shooting back.

In the media of United States, this term is primarily used. The other terms used to refer suicide by cop are death by cop, victim-precipitated homicide, police assisted suicide and blue suicide. (www.definitions.uslegal.com) A noticeable number of cases of provoked suicides are quite shocking, primarily in the developed Western countries and particularly, in the United States where guns and assaults and intimidations with ...