Suicide by Cop

Suicide-by-cop is a suicide method in which someone deliberately acts in a threatening way towards a law enforcement officer, with the main goal of provoking a lethal response (e.g., being shot to death). Such a person typically feels despondent and hopeless, but for whatever reason, doesn't want to take his/her own life directly. Alternately, the suicidal person, having no personal access to firearms and wishing to avoid methods of slow, uncertain and relatively more painful deaths, exploits the police officer's requirement to carry firearms.

The actual act has been described in news accounts from 1981, and scientific journals since 1985, although this particular phrase did not become common until the early 1990s. The phrase seems to have originated in the United States, but also appears in an article in the British newspaper The Guardian, dated May 10, 2003. The report states that a jury in a police-shooting inquest ruled it a suicide because on the scene, the subject reportedly stated "better get your guns out lads, I'm coming out" and a suicide note was later found. Some say that the 1976 death of Mal Evans was an example of this phenomenon. Some historians believe that Giuseppe Zangara, the man who attempted to assassinate then President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, might have been attempting suicide by police.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_cop