The reasons someone would knowingly provoke police to shoot at them, resulting in law enforcement using lethal force that ends the person’s life, are as varied as the instances of what’s colloquially known as “suicide by cop.”

“My experience has been, and I’ve testified in cases as a witness, that the suicide by cop, at times, is psychosis-driven by the individual, who has acute long-term psychological issues. But sometimes it’s impulse-driven by the individual, who is, at that moment, specifically involved in a law-enforcement incident,” said Dan Corsentino, the former police chief of Fountain and former four-term elected sheriff of Pueblo County.

While the phenomenon happened twice in the fourth quarter of 2024 in Colorado Springs, the occurrence is rare, said Ira Cronin, spokesman for the Colorado Springs Police Department.

The 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office is still reviewing both cases from Oct. 7 and Dec. 13, Cronin said, which is required by law any time authorities use lethal force — whether someone is behaving criminally or erratically.

For each case, the DA’s office will release a report determining whether the homicide was justified by the presence of a threat to the community and in compliance with Colorado law.

What is going through a person’s mind when they attempt or commit suicide by intentionally triggering law enforcement officers to shoot at them often is not revealed during an official investigation or by loved ones left behind.

But such scenarios present typical characteristics.

“There are different situations that involve why someone would do that,” said William Christensen, a licensed professional counselor, candidate and owner of Bestowed Fortitude Counseling Services in Black Forest. The practice specializes in working with law enforcement, first responders and military clients.

“Their helplessness, the desperation, they may have a desire to control the situation, they may need some attention, they may need help with psychological distress, they may be off their medications, there could be substance abuse going on, there could be a crisis in their life, they could have been victimized, there are social and cultural factors, there could be a media influence, and there are those who lack the resources or can’t find them,” Christensen said.

In any event, law enforcement officers focus on the safety of lives, and authorities follow a checklist in evaluating the need for use of deadly force before deploying their weapons, Cronin said.

“Someone wanting to die by suicide is never a reason that officers would cite as a justification to use deadly force,” he said. “Anytime a life is lost, it’s tragic, and it’s never the outcome our officers would ever hope for.”

Another use of lethal force involving Colorado Springs police on Dec. 17 is also still under investigation, Cronin said, though that case did not involve a suicidal person. But whether a person is suicidal or not, body cam footage shows police follow the same “priorities of life,” he said.

Police officers, sheriff’s deputies, state patrol troopers and other armed responders are trained to follow the edict that “every life involved in a law-enforcement situation is accounted for,” according to Cronin.

Hostages or innocent people in danger are the top priority, he said, followed by other innocent people or the community in general.

Next is the officer’s own life and safety, as well as the lives and safety of fellow officers, and then comes the safety and life of the suspect.

Deescalation tactics also follow those priorities.

Corsentino said many times authorities will use nonlethal force — such as a Taser or rubber bullets — to subdue a suicidal person or get them to drop their gun or knife or otherwise comply with commands — and without endangering the public or officers.

“Our hope is never to have to take a life,” Cronin said.

The 911 emergency assistance line in El Paso County receives calls daily about people who are in a mental health crisis, and often the call taker is “able to get them the help they need and connect them with available resources without officers ever becoming involved,” he said.

Other times, police are sent to the scene.

Some situations begin calmly and turn volatile, but the most difficult are the unknown circumstances, when officers aren’t aware that someone is potentially suicidal or there’s no communication between the person and authorities, said Corsentino, who owns DC Investigations/IdentoGO Services, a security, investigation and consulting firm in Pueblo.

“The individual may be armed or is armed, and the officer or negotiator is attempting to communicate, and they’re not getting a response,” he said.

“Officers are trained to wait and be patient and allow that individual to collect their thoughts — if they’re not under the influence of a drug or narcotic. Sometimes that’s the wild card.”

After committing a crime and in the course of trying to elude police, some people decide right then that they’d rather die than go to prison, Corsentino said. Behavior such as yelling or screaming gives clues to an individual’s state of mind, but other times, whether a person is acting on impulse or has a premeditated plan of suicide, police must analyze in seconds what might happen and how they’ll react, he said.

“You may be limited in your ability to deescalate the situation if a person is intent upon harming an officer, presenting a threat with a weapon or, in a sense, harming themselves,” he said. “You may not have time to get a negotiator.”

Today’s critical incident training

Awareness about police-assisted suicide began publicly in the early 1980s, but cases did not become more common until the early 2000s, according to historical accounts.

In looking back on past notable crimes, some historians believe that during an assassination attempt 17 days before President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, the suspect, Guiseppe Zangara, who missed his target and instead killed the mayor of Chicago, might have been attempting suicide by cop.

And the 1976 death of The Beatles’ road manager, Mal Evans, is thought to have been suicide by cop, according to a December 2023 article based on research by Kenneth Womack, since Evans had written a will the night before he threatened officers with an air rifle at his home in Los Angeles.

In a “Suicide by Cop: Protocol and Training Guide,” the Police Executive Research Forum estimates that each year from 2015 to 2018, there were 900 to 1,000 fatal officer-involved shootings in the United States, of which between  10%-30% involved suicide-by-cop incidents.

And a major study in Los Angeles, “Suicide by Cop: A New Perspective on an Old Phenomenon,” released in 2019, indicated that for every suicide-by-cop incident that ended with the person’s death, another 60 cases were attempted deaths by suicide, but police de-escalated the situation without using lethal force.

About 25 years ago, Corsentino was selected to participate in a national Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus project of the Council of State Governments. Experts from around the nation in law enforcement and mental health spent two years studying how to improve the criminal justice system’s response to people with mental illness.

The U.S. Justice Department published the recommendations in a report released in 2002.

At the time, Corsentino said, law enforcement had “a very difficult time recognizing people with psychosis, and there were too many shootings by law enforcement on individuals who were mentally ill.”

Based on those findings, critical-incident training, procedures, response and awareness are “completely different now,” he said.

“They’re taught to look for certain indicators of how the individual presents themselves,” Corsentino said. “They may be making threats (like), ‘I’m going to kill myself or you,’ and the primary first-responder officer has to make decisions. As long as a weapon is not raised or in the process of being raised, law enforcement will continue to communicate and try to deescalate.”

When communication is lacking, the unfolding of a suicide-by-cop scheme may be unknown by the officer, he said.

With today’s technology, the background of people who have had previous contact with law enforcement is accessible at a fingertip — which can help police figure out what they might be dealing with, Corsentino said.

“If police have that historical information upon their arrival, they may be treating that individual a little differently — unless that individual raises a gun at them or presents lethal force,” he said. “Law enforcement is trained to stop the threat. Period. And protect the people around them.”

‘Tough for everybody’

Forced assisted-suicide on law enforcement is taxing for everyone. It affects many, from families, to police and the community, who may not have all the facts and not understand what transpired before police responded with lethal force, Corsentino said.

“The officer may be ridiculed or criticized because they discharged their weapon,” but that could come from an individual who is “clueless as to what led up to that,” he said, “which makes it harder on the officer at times.”

Over recent decades, police have been denounced for shooting people that appeared to be armed but were not, or people who pointed a toy gun or inoperable replica of a firearm at cops, producing a lethal response.

Christensen, the therapist, said when a person becomes overwhelmed with despair and perceives an inability to cope with life, they may decide while they don’t want to kill themselves, they want to die at the hands of another.

“There’s always mitigating circumstances — whether it’s substance abuse, mixing meds and alcohol, infidelity in a relationship, financial hardship, grief over losing a child or spouse,” he said. “Every situation is different, and it’s tough for everybody.”

Law enforcement involved in lethal force are placed on leave and given time to decompress, process and internally mourn, Christensen said.

“When they unexpectedly had to take a life because an officer had no option available to them when an individual presented lethal force, the post-shooting impact to the officer clearly takes a period of time for readjustment,” Corsentino said.

While mental health care and treatment has been in the national spotlight since the pandemic left many people struggling with anxiety, depression, loneliness and despair — law enforcement-assisted suicide takes it to the extreme, Christensen said.

“It’s the last thing law enforcement officers want to do — having to shoot someone to preserve the safety of others,” he said. “They try to their best to deescalate and talk people down, and sometimes they’re successful, and sometimes it does not end well.”

Many police departments and sheriff’s offices have on-staff therapists available. Rising suicide rates among public safety officers are a concern that agencies are working to curb.

A 2023 study published in the Journal of Community Safety & Well-Being of nearly 4,000 officers found that 44% had experienced psychological distress, such as depression and anxiety within the previous month, and nearly a quarter indicated moderate to severe distress.

In the seven years from 2016 to 2022, there were 1,287 law enforcement and correctional officers who died by suicide in the United States, according to a report released in March 2024 by First HELP and CNA Corp.

Families or individuals who need mental health assistance at any time can dial 988 on any phone to reach the nation’s universal crisis hotline.