suicide by cop

According to a recent study, perhaps as many as 1/10 of all suspects fatally shot by police officers are suicidal and have committed their crimes with the intention of being killed by the police. The majority of people who choose to commit suicide in this fashion are males, which seems to fit the trend of males using more violent methods to commit suicide than females. An uncharacteristically large percentage of them have a history of domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse.

Approximately one-half of individuals who end their life in this manner threaten the police with a real loaded firearm. About 20 percent use replica firearms.

Suicide by cop is on the rise. Police consider this an especially undesirable method of suicide because of the psychological impact it has on the officers involved. Many police are now aware of the problem and try to use nonlethal force when possible.

Not only is there a psychological impact on the officers, there is also physical implications. These people committing suicide want to be killed by the police. The fastest way to get cops shooting at you is to shoot at them. The suicidal person most of the time doesn't care if he actually kills or maims an officer for he will be dead anyway. He just simply wants the officers to kill him. Especially now that the police now know about this problem and are trying to use nonlethal force, more police are in danger. As the suicidal person gets impatient when police don't shoot him when he just waves the gun around, he will have to start shooting to get what he wants.

How does this affect insurance? I know if someone commits suicide, life insurances is not paid. What if they are committing a crime? I suppose this is a way for people to make their families feel better in that they didn't kill themselves, the police killed them. For a lot of people, they can justify that and come up with a good conspiracy theory to make themselves feel beter.