The term, suicide-by-cop (SBC) was first coined by police officer and psychologist Karl Harris in 1983 to refer to a special kind of officer-involved shooting (OIS) scenario, where a subject deliberately provokes police into killing him, usually by making an actual or simulated threatening gesture at them with a firearm or other weapon. It has been estimated that approximately 10 percent of the 600 police shootings a year in the United States are SBC incidents, and most involve uniformed officers who are on duty at the time of the shooting.
The typical SBC subject is a white male in his mid-20s with a history of drug and alcohol abuse. He has probably had prior contact with the law but usually for minor offenses, although this may have given him some familiarity with how police operate in response to threats. A psychiatric history is common, usually a serious psychotic or mood disorder, and almost half of subjects have made previous suicide attempts. The particular crisis episode usually originates with the rupture of some important family, employment, or other relationship, which leads to feelings of hopelessness, anger, and despair. The two most common scenarios involve an armed robbery or a domestic disturbance call, although an increasing number of workplace and school violence scenarios may include a SBC action. In almost half the cases, the crisis is fueled by alcohol intoxication, and in two-thirds of cases, the subject has taken hostages.
Some SBC incidents arise spontaneously out of the anger and panic of these situations, while others appear to be planned, as evidenced by the presence of a suicide note in nearly a third of cases. Motivations for SBC include:
1.) noble warrior: wanting to end one’s life in a blaze of glory that will seem heroic, not cowardly
2.) religious compunction: suicide is a sin, so if someone else kills the subject, maybe he can still go to Heaven
3) dollars and cents: the subject may want to provide for loved ones, and thereby not violate a life insurance policy that has an exclusion for suicide
4) quick and painless: many other forms of suicide (pills, poisons, artery-slitting, ledge-jumping, vehicle crashes) are not foolproof — the subject could linger in agony before dying, or be left alive as a helpless cripple. Few methods appear as lethally effective as being instantly felled by a hail of bullets fired from multiple police weapons.
In the most unambiguous case, a disturbed citizen has a beef with the police, so he purposefully calls them to the scene and then deliberately manipulates them into shooting him. Another scenario involves a disturbed, suicidal subject who lacks the resolve to kill himself, so he baits the police into doing it for him. An alternative scenario might be called suicide-in-front-of-cop. Here, police arrive at the scene and the subject makes a point of killing himself in full view of the officers (or within earshot, if by phone). This dramatic act may be performed out of sheer despair or the subject may want the police to “bear witness” to his act of desperate martyrdom, as a way of thumbing his nose at the officers’ inability to prevent it.
While there are a range of verbal negotiation strategies to try to intervene with suicidal subjects, many of these individuals are just too disturbed to be reasoned with and may decide to take their life anyway. Indeed, some suicidal subjects actually call police themselves and threaten to harm third parties because they expect police will respond to a hostage situation faster than to a “mere” suicide.
In all cases, law enforcement responders will make every effort to end the SBC confrontation nonviolently. In one major study of SBC subjects who were ultimately shot by police, all subjects forcefully resisted arrest or orders by police to surrender, and all possessed a firearm or other lethal weapon that they used to threaten police or others. This indicates that responding officers’ decision to shoot in these circumstances is never taken lightly and virtually always occurs in the context of imminent threat to life. Nevertheless, officers involved in SBC incidents often feel a sense of powerlessness and manipulation, and this is typically reported to be an especially stressful and demoralizing form of OIS trauma.
Police Officers’ Reactions to a SBC Incident
Sometimes you may have no choice but to take the subject down. Remember that SBC is often not a clear-cut situation and, in my experience, it is the issue of control that seems to most disturb officers following SBC calls. Cops hate to believe that they’ve failed or that they’ve been played. In fact, many officers report feeling worse after not being able to stop a suicidal subject from taking his own life than they do after not being able to prevent a homicidal subject from killing another person. This seeming paradox can be explained by the fact that the homicidal killer was either a cold-blooded scumbag who had no compunctions about taking another’s life or else he was so whacked out from drugs or mental illness that he didn’t know what he was doing or didn’t care about the consequences. Either way, in a strange, evil, crazy sort of way, the killing was “bound” to happen, whereas a suicide is something officers think they should have been able to prevent.
Additionally, in clinical practice I’ve noted an interesting psychodynamic that emerges in some officers who have been through a SBC incident. For many officers, suicidal subjects themselves may be viewed with a combination of pity and contempt. On a conscious level, the idea of giving up and taking one’s own life is especially repugnant to most cops, because they typically like to maintain an image of themselves as being able to handle just about anything life throws at them. Yet a fair number of officers harbor a secret fear of being overwhelmed by the stresses of life and, during especially rough times, some have thought at least fleetingly about the ultimate check-out.
Thus, to maintain personal integrity and a strong self-image, they struggle to repudiate and banish such thoughts from conscious consideration. Psychologically, then, failing to prevent a subject from killing himself may symbolically stand in for the officer’s own unconscious fear that he may someday fail to prevent his own demons from bringing him down (“There, but for the grace of God...”). Worse still, where this officer becomes the actual instrument of death in a SBC case, this fearful identification becomes all the more disturbing because it has been acted out in real life, albeit on the proxy of the dead subject. Here’s someone who gave up, cashed out, and had the cops write the check.
Psychological Coping Strategies for Officers Involved in a SBC Incident
I hear you saying, “Okay, Sigmund, but what do we do about it?” Even if you fell asleep during the above Psychology class, you can recognize the simple fact that SBC situations can be difficult to deal with; no cop likes the feeling of having been baited and manipulated into kill another person. For that reason, consider some of the following general recommendations for getting past the SBC incident and moving on.
Participate in an operational debriefing. This is for tactical training. In my writing, teaching, teaching, and training seminars, one of the points I consistently emphasize is: 20/20 hindsight = 20/20 insight = 20/20 foresight. That is, figuring out and understanding what went wrong last time can lead to things having a better outcome next time. This is the essence of learning from experience, which can take some of the sting out of the bad call because now you’re armed with greater knowledge and skill and are more confident about what you can do in the future. To be maximally effective, training should be both didactic (validated information on SBC) and practice-based (run-through scenarios, with analysis of transcripts), and conducted by trainers who are knowledgeable and experienced in this area and related areas of crisis intervention.
Attend a critical incident stress debriefing. This is for your own head. Properly carried out, a CISD can allow constructive ventilation of feelings in a supportive atmosphere, create a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose, and provide you with practical physical and mental coping skills for getting through this crisis.
Seek individual counseling. Either as an adjunct to the above or where a formal CISD is not available, don’t be afraid to utilize the services of a trained counselor or mental health clinician with a background in police psychology. If you’re having trouble dealing with the aftereffects of the SBC call, a few head-straightening sessions should be able to get you on the right track. These kinds of services should be supported and encouraged by every department that truly cares for the health and welfare of its personnel. Not every cop in every SBC or other OIS situation will need the services of a mental health professional. But if you feel you’re just not getting yourself back together let someone show you the way. The focus of this type of psychological intervention should not be to dwell on your childhood (although insight from the past can sometimes be helpful for dealing with the present), but mainly to:
1.) afford a sympathetic ear to whom you can vent in confidence
2.) provide you with a range of coping techniques to deal with the practical and emotional effects of the OBM aftermath
3.) help you achieve a reality check on the incident itself
Just as one example, police psychologist Roger Solomon describes a frame-by-frame technique that allows the officer to review the incident and distinguish what he/she knew and could have done then, as distinct from what could only be known in hindsight.
Aside from the above general recommendations, here are some more specific and individualized tips for dealing with the aftermath of a SBC incident, especially if there is no formal post-incident protocol, which is often the case in smaller police agencies.
Get the facts. You may garner some of the facts about the case from the operational debriefing — if there is one — from official reports, or from the local media. In most cases, it helps to have some insight into what made the subject provoke the responding officers into killing him. One of the most frustrating aspects of a SBC, or any OIS incidents, is just how little information is imparted to the involved officers, especially early in the follow-up process while there may be an ongoing investigation. You may have to be patient (don’t be a pest!), but eventually allow yourself to process the event with accurate information about it.
Talk it out. You’ll be doing a lot of talking — to supervisors, investigators, etc. — but here I’m referring to sharing your thoughts and feelings with one or a select few of your trusted confidantes. However, pick your confidantes carefully. When it comes to critical incidents involving OISs, cops can be like a class of 5th-grade boys, slobbering all over you to get the titillating details: How many rounds did he take? Did he die right away or linger? Did he say anything? How many shots did he get off before you dropped him?
Motivations vary. In most cases, there is a strong identification factor: a few of the other guys and gals may have gone through similar experiences themselves and want to compare how they handled it with how you’re coping. Most of your other colleagues know that it’s just a matter of time and dumb luck before they find themselves in a similar situation, so they’re trying to get a sense of what it’s like to go through this. Then there are the “trauma junkies” who just get off on hearing you relate the grisly details of your incident, the “emotional vampires” who feed off other people’s angst and despair, or the “better-you-than-me” types who are, well, glad it was you and not them.
Family and a few non-cop friends may be more sympathetic, but you may feel that because they’ve never experienced something like this, they couldn’t possibly understand it fully. True enough, but you don’t have to be gravely ill yourself in order to give support to a loved one who’s going through cancer surgery, and you don’t have to have suffered your own traumatic bereavement to be there for a buddy who’s kid was killed or injured in a car accident — you simply give of yourself.
Same here: if you trust the sincerity of the people you count on, then let the powers of instinctive human empathy take over. Sometimes, it’s even refreshing to speak with someone who’s not going to come back at you with a lot of “cop-talk.”
And if you just don’t feel like talking at that moment, politely decline to discuss the matter. Genuinely well-intentioned family and friends will gladly respect your wishes for solitude and privacy, and will be there when you need them.
Keep productively busy. The operative word here is “productive.” Down time is dead time, which can lead to unproductive rumination and/or unhealthy activities. Usually, after any OIS, including a SBC, there is going to be a mandatory period — ranging from days to weeks — where you’re put on administrative leave, or reassigned to non-patrol duty (“Oh, no ...the dreaded desk job!”). If you’re still working, work — even if it’s just shuffling papers or inputting data into a laptop all day. Put in your time, knowing that this won’t last forever. If you’re at home on leave, find something healthy and meaningful to occupy your time. Use the off-time to get back to the gym, build that deck, or take that trip. When you need to rest, rest, then move on.
Tolerate normal human emotions. Feeling sad or remorseful about an unintended tragic outcome is not the same as being guilty and it’s not necessarily clinical depression. If shit happens, feeling shitty is expected. Likewise, feeling “pissed and dissed” because you think you’ve been misunderstood, misinterpreted, and falsely accused of wrongdoing in a rush to judgment doesn’t mean you have an anger management problem. You just need to learn how to moderate your gut’s effect on your brain. Of course, stress heightens and magnifies all of our reactions, so try to monitor (or ask trusted others to do it for you) when you feel that your emotions are spiraling out of control.
Learn from it. Remember my 20/20/20 rule, described above: If you can figure out what went wrong last time, maybe you can prevent a similar incident (or advise someone else how to prevent it) next time. Knowing that you have a handle on the problem gives a feeling of control which, in turn, boosts confidence which, in turn, dilutes guilt and despair. There are at least two dimensions to this learning curve, including:
1.) operational: utilizing formal training or self-education to bump up your tactical skillset, and
2.) psychological: getting some insight into your own cognitive and emotional reaction patterns, so you can learn to modulate them under future stressful conditions.
Don’t forget the good stuff. For police and other public safety professionals who tend to endorse a code of perfectionism, there is a temptation to believe that “you’re only as good as your last screw-up,” which can be unnecessarily corrosive to morale and your ability to perform at your best. When a situation goes bad, review it, learn from it, correct it, but don’t wallow in it. By utilizing operational failures as tools for learning, purposeless remorse can be turned into enhanced life-saving skills for the future. Remind yourself of all the calls that went well because you did the right thing, and that there is probably a “silent majority” of people out there who depend on you and appreciate the work you do.
Here’s the Bottom Line
A SBC incident, OIS scenario, or other critical incident is almost always a jolting, disorienting — but recoverable — event, requiring at most some short-term intervention and a little decompression time. Expect a full recovery, and if, after a couple of weeks, something is impeding your progress, don’t be afraid to haul your brain in for a maintenance check.
DISCLAIMER: This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide specific clinical or legal advice.
NOTE: To learn more about this topic, see:
Miller, L. (2006). Suicide by cop: Causes, reactions, and practical intervention strategies. International Journal of Emergency Mental Health, 8 165-174.
Miller, L. (2006). Officer-involved shooting: Reaction patterns, response protocols, and psychological intervention strategies. International Journal of Emergency Mental Health, 8, 239-254.
[Reprints are available from the author: send request and e-mail or surface mailing address to docmilphd@aol.com].
Miller, L. (2006). Practical Police Psychology: Stress Management and Crisis Intervention for Law Enforcement. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas.
[Learn more about this book at www.ccthomas.com].
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