Deputies Avoid a Would-Be ‘Suicide by Cop’

It isn’t every day that law enforcement authorities will walk away from someone who is armed and agitated.

But that’s what Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies from the Antelope Valley did last week when a 28-year-old man was threatening to kill himself at Sycamore Flats Campground near Valyermo.

Deputies arrived to find the man pointing a rifle at his head and ordered him to drop it. When he didn’t, deputies fired several shotgun-propelled beanbag blasts to force his surrender.

After that failed to end the standoff, they initiated talks that lasted six hours, then decided he was no immediate threat to anyone else and withdrew.

“These are young, assertive deputies,” said Lt. Bob Rifkin, a watch commander at the Antelope Valley substation. “It’s not a normal process to leave a man in the desert with a rifle threatening to kill himself. It’s pretty rare.”

So what made this case different?

According to Rifkin, deputies weighed “the totality of the circumstances,” including the man’s demeanor and the threat he posed to those around him, including civilians and deputies.

“Would we have done the same thing if he was in a house in a populated area? Probably not.”

Yet, Rifkin and the department’s behavioral experts say there appeared to be another factor: the man was inviting deputies to kill him.

“Suicide by cop,” the catch phrase for people who make threatening actions for the express purpose of getting themselves shot by police, is a topic now gaining serious attention from police agencies, said Dr. Barry Perrou, who heads the sheriff’s crisis negotiating team and is the agency’s in-house expert on the subject.

“For years, law enforcement has been dealing with officer-involved shootings,” Perrou said. “But we are just now starting to dissect it out to look at repeated behavioral patterns that suggest there’s a pathology that occurs before law enforcement is called to the scene and engaged prior to the critical moment.”

In fact, a 1997 Sheriff’s Department study looked at 384 officer-involved shootings between 1987 and 1996 and found about 10% of such incidents were probably suicide by cop.

The report, the conclusions of which were nearly identical to studies recently conducted in Florida and Oregon, also found common characteristics among people who use the police to kill themselves.

An overwhelming majority (about 96%), for example, were male. Most had psychiatric problems and asked to be killed by police. Half were substance abusers, 38% made previous suicide attempts while 42% had a history of domestic violence.

There can be a real downside for the police officers who also become victims when they are used as the means of suicide, Perrou said. They live with the emotional burden of killing someone.

However, armed with this kind of knowledge, the department now is developing protocols to handle these individuals when the situation arises, hoping to spare everyone from the tragic ending.

“We are more savvy,” Perrou said. “Excellent research has been done. It’s the tip of the iceberg.”

As for the would-be suicide, the deputies’ withdrawal seemed to work beautifully. It is being investigated by the Sheriff’s Department and the Los Angeles County Mental Health department, according to a sheriff’s official. But as far as they know, their despondent suspect went home.