Maverick44
Youngest old man on TGT.
Straight outta wiki overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_cop
"There are two broad categories of 'suicide by cop'. The first is when someone has committed a crime and is being pursued by the police and decides that they would rather die than be arrested. These people may not otherwise be suicidal but may simply decide that life is not worth living if they are incarcerated and thus will provoke police to kill them. The second version involves people who are already contemplating suicide and who decide that provoking law enforcement into killing them is the best way to act on their desires. These individuals may commit a crime with the specific intention of provoking a law enforcement response."
I know, I know--it's wikipedia, but it's more "proof" than what you've offered. Or something.
You say you want to be a police officer. Great. I'm an actual police officer (albeit on disability), and I'm telling you that based upon my experience and understanding, the Atlantic City case was a suicide by cop. Cops involved in such instances can take comfort in knowing that they did what they had to do. They were backed into that corner. And no matter how hardcore you may believe a cop to be, taking a human life is something that wears on a good person. Folks need to be able to file things away into little corners of their minds and "suicide by cop" is just one of those ways. Just my dos centavos . . .
The legal definition is as follows.
Police Assisted Suicide Law and Legal Definition
In this type of suicide, a person intentionally engages in life-threatening behavior to induce a police officer to shoot that person. His/her goal is to provoke the law enforcement officer to a lethal response. This is distinguished from other police shootings by three elements
https://definitions.uslegal.com/p/police-assisted-suicide/
- The person should show an intention to die.
- The person understands the finality of the act
- Confronts a law-enforcement official with such extreme behavior that the officer is compelled to act with deadly force.
The strung out fella in the video certainly confronted officers with extreme enough behavior that they were compelled to react with deadly force, but the two other elements are not so clear. Did he intend to die, and did he understand what he was doing? PCP is a hell of a drug as I stated earlier. It can make the user delusional, make him think he's invincible, and cause any number of other effects that can make the user do things they wouldn't normally do. He was not acting rational, and I highly doubt he knew exactly what he was doing. By that legal definition, unless it can be proven that he was thinking rationally enough to know what he was doing and what the end results would be, I cannot call this a suicide by cop. I fully understand officers using that term to help them cope with what they've been forced to do to defend themselves and others. I'm speaking solely in the legal sense though.
Suicide or not, the officers were completely justified in their actions. I have no doubt that it will wear on them regardless, but I feel they have no reason to feel bad for their actions. They were forced into that situation, and they had a choice of either being killed, or shooting back.
We are not the first to debate this issue, and we won't be the last.
https://www.policeone.com/suicide-b...de-By-Cop-Is-it-time-to-stop-using-this-term/