Victim-precipitated homicide seems like a concept we ought to marginalize.
The title reads as if it were a how-to book, which was an unusual choice.
I'm sure it exists to some extent, but I have maddeningly seen imperfectly-compliant behavior that led to shooting by police described as 'suicide by cop' when that manifestly wasn't the victim's intent, on a "Any reasonable person would have known better than to act like that" theory.
So the phrase kind of annoys me.
Suicide by cop is a well-established phenomenon.
So it's a sociology textbook on the topic? Why is that weird?
I have maddeningly seen imperfectly-compliant behavior that led to shooting by police described as 'suicide by cop' when that manifestly wasn't the victim's intent,
Originally I tried to take the post in this direction, but I couldn't figure out how to write it.
4: Oh yes. The fact that Apostropher has seen it on the internet is the hallmark of something being well-established.
No, really, it's a thing. I thought there was a discussion of it in this surprising book but if there is it doesn't seem to be online.
I thought it was a "For Dummies" book.
I thought it must be a Loompanix book to draw such surprise.
I first encountered the idea (phrased in a more dramatic way) in the Heinlein book The Number Of The Beast
... the favorite form of suicide is to take a rifle up some tower and keep shooting until the riot squad settles it.
11: Is Loompanix still around? I thought they got sued into dust.
The less clinical term is usually "go [out/down] in a hail of bullets".
13: Right? The hit man book? I don't really remember the outcome of all that.
The less clinical term is usually "go [out/down] in a hail of bullets".
That sounds more like Bonnie and Clyde than suicide by cop.
Victim-precipitated homicide seems like a concept we ought to marginalize.
Yeah, but when you're getting killed by someone who can kill with impunity, it's win-win.
This is one of the ways that, in our society, men are just so inconsiderate compared to women. Just because you want to die, you get to put others through such trauma? Asshole.
A lot of the difference in suicide rates has to do with men choosing effective, but also really traumatic-to-others, methods, guns being the obvious example. I'm also thinking of the NYU students who jumped to their deaths in the library atrium where, hello, people have to work there, and someone has to clean up your mess.
Speaking only in terms of broad statistical generalities, obviously. But even if you're just shooting yourself in the head with a gun, someone still has to clean that up, and it's gotta be a much more unpleasant job than, say, just hosing down the blood left from the razors-in-bathtub approach. And someone has to identify the body, too!
Okay, I'm going to stop talking about this now. I agree with 2 that the title of the book sounded weirdly "How To".
A woman I know at MIT was very badly upset by having a suicide land right in front of her. A few steps further and she could have been killed.
A lot of the difference in suicide rates has to do with men choosing effective, but also really traumatic-to-others, methods, guns being the obvious example.
Consider the "trespassers" on Caltrain tracks, for instance.
(I've mentioned this before) but a good friend in college committed suicide, and put a lot of effort into making it as thoughtful a method to go as possible. He bought a BBQ grill, checked into a hotel room, put a towel under the door, and asphyxiated himself. Painless, found by a stranger, no mess to clean up, body as untraumatized as possible for his parents, etc.
23: that's one of those stories where my first response is, "yeah! why can't more people do that?" and then I realize how that sounds.
23: shouldn't your parentheses end after "but"?
I was eating at a Hooters in NYC about... 8?... years ago, sitting at a table right next to the window overlooking the sidewalk, and midway through the meal a man landed on the sidewalk immediately outside the window, and his head exploded all over the sidewalk and window. It pretty much ruined the meal. The police conversations that followed indicated it was a suicide jump.
I mean, if you're going to do something, do it right.
Consider the "trespassers" on Caltrain tracks, for instance.
We've had some of those here with the light rail. People, commutes already suck. Don't fuck up everyone's ride home with a huge delay.
Jumping off of really high stuff is surprisingly non messy. With guns the deer rifle or shotgun is pretty reliable. Handguns are more iffy. In particular a .38 under the chin at the wrong angle will leave you very much alive and wandering the scene with a mouth that looks like the Predator. If you're going into a scene where they've used a rifle or shotgun make sure you're looking up as well so you don't get dripped on. Particularly if it's an unfinished garage with exposed beams as there might be, uh, "bacon" hanging from the rafters.
his head exploded all over the sidewalk and window. It pretty much ruined the meal.
Nothing can ruin huge titties though.
It pretty much ruined the meal.
Even the wings?
Jumping off of really high stuff is surprisingly non messy.
You've got much more exposure to all of this than I do, but if what happened in 25 was non messy I definitely would hate to see messy.
I should clarify that fully clothed landing feet first is non messy. I imagine swan dive is a different story.
29: If the guy had wings, he'd have landed safely.
I should have mentioned: that was the first time I'd ever been to NYC. It wasn't a particularly nice first impression.
We had a really drunk guy try it out of his top floor apartment a couple days ago. But the building only has three floors and it's not even really a full three stories high because the ground level apartments are half underground. He had a good running start though because he jumped right through a large double paned window in his living room. Really impressive hole in that window. Was just laying there on his back in the flower bed with a lot of glass around around him when I pulled up. Laughed a bit but wouldn't answer when I asked him in my half assed Spanish what had happened, does he not want to live, etc.
There's a mostly fantastic film from the 1940s that ends like this (more or less; not quite Bonnie and Clyde, but it does have political aspects) but I won't name it since that will draw out the people who hate spoilers.
My favorite suicide attempt was the one where me and my friend found my former roommate surrounded by empty prescription pill bottles, nyquil, and an empty bottle of vodka. While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I looked at my buddy and said, "We have to talk to her, keep her awake until they get here."
"Right." She said.
A pause.
"Um. What do we say?"
Another pause.
"Soooo, how was your day?"
The former roommate was conscious enough to laugh. I thought that was kind of inspired on my friend's part.
The rest of the night was less fun.
midway through the meal a man landed on the sidewalk immediately outside the window
I think this might traumatize me.
I did once see a drunk kid climb about three stories high in a tree, as part of a WE WON FOOTBALL! college mob, and then fall all the way back down again. I think he lived, but that was pretty upsetting for me.
I know it's not cool to like Malcolm Gladwell anymore, but The Tipping Point describes some interesting research on many car accidents actually being hidden suicides.
At one point in college my roomate was doing research for a screenplay which involved a faked suicide attempt. It turns out that there's a shockingly detailed book that will tell you for every method what your likelihood of dying is, likelihood of other damage, whether your face would turn blue and look bad at a funeral, etc. http://www.amazon.com/Suicide-Attempted-Methods-Consequences/dp/0786704926
Doh.
It reminds me of a factoid I read a while back, I think on Ezra Klein's pre-Post blog but I can't swear to that and I'm too lazy to try to track it down again.
Apparently, the number of people living in involuntary restraint - basically, people in jail or mental hospitals combined - has been almost completely constant for the past 50 years or more, through economic swings, changing medical practices, changing social trends, etc. The thing is, in the 80s the ratio of the number of people in prison to the number of people in mental hospitals grew greatly. Same number of people in that artifical "involuntary restraint" category overall, but now they're getting sent to jail. Or shot, apparently.
Suicide by proxy is a larger phenomenon than just the modern suicide by cop and has existed in Western societies for hundreds of years. (For instance, in the early modern period there was a fairly wide-spread phenomenon in Western Europe that involved suicidal persons killing children in order to get themselves executed -- thus allowing themselves to be confessed and accepted back into God's graces before death rather than forever damned.)
Suicide by proxy
Um, death is one's ownmost possibility, (). No one can die for one.
Don't ask me, nosflow, I didn't make up the term.
No one can die for one.
Heathen.
Apparently, the number of people living in involuntary restraint - basically, people in jail or mental hospitals combined - has been almost completely constant for the past 50 years or more, through economic swings, changing medical practices, changing social trends, etc. The thing is, in the 80s the ratio of the number of people in prison to the number of people in mental hospitals grew greatly.
Well, not quite: total institutionalization dropped massively in the 60s, as the psychiatric wards emptied out; it was only later, starting in the mid 70s and really taking off a decade later, that the increasingly punitive prison system 'caught up'. The story in one picture.
You're thinking of Bern/ard Harc/ourt's work, which he summarized in a series of guest posts at VC. There's also a Texas Law Review version, and I assume some of this made it into his new book that's supposedly about how our willingness to throw people in cages in somehow connected to (classical & neo-) liberal social theory.
Institutionalizing the idea of 'died while resisting arrest' is deeply, deeply icky.
However. Suicide is illegal, and in our fine Judeo-Christian republic is likely to remain so. Perhaps the risk of colluding in a crime against State and God will encourage non-lethal responses.
No one can die for one.
Heathen.
Proselytizer.
20: A coworker of mine had to go after one of our clients who had killed himself. He hanged himself. I don't think it would have been less traumatic for her if it had been a bunch of pills.
The deal is that women try to kill themselves more often but that men who attempt suicide usually employ more lethal means.
47: I'd like to see more of those numbers. My understanding was that a lot of old people got put in mental institutions. Once Medicaid came on board as a funding stream for nursing home care poor old people left the mental hospitals.
a much more unpleasant job than, say, just hosing down the blood left from the razors-in-bathtub approach
I've mentioned it before, I think, but a friend and I showed up at a grocery store about 15 minutes after a guy had bought a pack of razor blades, opened them at the counter and slit his wrists right there. Huge mess and traumatized clerk, but on the plus side, it was a good setting for a cry-for-help suicide attempt, since he was off to the hospital in minutes.
Also mentioned before, but my mom had a case involving a double suicide pact between a young couple who'd agreed to hold guns to each other's chins and count to three. She hesitated, he didn't.
And Heaven help me for laughing at 25, but what was funny about it somehow exceeded what was totally not.
36 was extremely funny. God help me.
re 43, there's a lot of history of depressed soldiers seeking, as it were, suicide by enemy. One of the battalion commanders at Dien Bien Phu was widely thought to be trying this; he'd been depressed since his wife died en route to join him in Hanoi the year before. (Windrow)
My mother had a patient who had overdosed on tranqs, sat on the train tracks, and attempted to eat her gun. She only had a shotgun, and was so clumsy with the tranqs that she missed and shot through a cheek and knocked herself off the tracks. By the time Mom had her in the hospital, she was being a good sport about the unsurpassable ineptitude of her whole life. I think she got help and lived.
Kurt Cobain was unusual in that town for being cheerful enough to escape.
Yeah, I felt bad enough about laughing at 25 that I thought about it a bunch. I've concluded that it's the setting of a Hooters, combined with the observation that "[i]t pretty much ruined the meal."
I mean that...that is funny. Except for the trauma, urple, I'm sorry about that.
And for the guy who died.
54: Right? But the girl who'd just tried to kill herself laughed at it, so I think we're in the clear.
So, we've established that a splattered body can ruin urple's meal.
Pretty much ruin. "Pretty much ruined" is partially not ruined.
"Pretty much" is key. It's like, "I almost couldn't finish my hamburger."
It can ruin a Hooters meal for urple, but that is starting from a very low bar. To really test the theory, we need to get him a gift certificate to The French Laundry and then push somebody out of a helicopter or something.
I was thinking it meant more that, like, wings with bleu cheese were fine, but he probably avoided the mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce for the rest of the evening.
"Can I change my order? Instead of the Sloppy Joe..."
OT: I have just accepted a job! I got a job!
Oh, God, that gets even funnier if you imagine someone changing their order the other way in that moment of general silence before everyone tries to return to an approximation of normalcy.
Just...awkward.
Woohoo! Yeehah! What's it like?
Can you say where it is, or anything about it?
Congrats!!
61: Given that it's urple there really should be no surprise, but you're in Manhattan for the first time in your life and you eat at Hooter's? Were the lines at McDonald's too long that day?
Wow, AWB, that's amazing, especially in a year like this. Wherever it is, they're going to be very lucky to have you.
I'd been about to say that I am so humorless these days that the suicide and/or sudden death stories are unfunny,
but that's great, AWB.
75: Me.
67: Too early for flapjacks pancakes?
Thanks, guys. It's a one-year thing, but it's all classes in my field, and it pays very well. It will mean moving to a small town to work at a prestigious little college, learning to drive again and adjusting to a new life for the first time in eight years, but I really needed a new life.
That sounds really great -- I've been getting the impression that living in NY was dragging you down, so the location's a big plus. And probably a saner work-life balance so that you can work on scholarship!
Yes, and the biggest comfort is that I'll be teaching half the number of courses I usually do, with no commute, and all in my field, and making well over twice what I make now, with full health benefits. I've been wanting something like this to happen for so long that I hardly know how to deal with the change in circumstance.
Congrats, AWB, that's awesome.
84: Sounds awesome! I think you'll be able to adjust!
learning to drive again
Because of Obamunism, we all drive on the left-hand side now, and NPR is the only thing on the radio. It's a deeply pleasing experience.
90: No, Stanley, no! Watch out! Get over to the right! You can't believe everything that Glenn Beck says!
making well over twice what I make now, with full health benefits [...] I hardly know how to deal with the change
Time to pick up that barbiturate habit you've been putting off all these years!
86: Nope! But it's a similar thing. I haven't announced publicly yet so no more guessing!
Hooters University is in Atlanta, so I guess we can rule out that one.
84 is really good news. The change must be stunning to contemplate; how excellent! I'm glad you're on a road again.
Congratulations, AWB. It sounds like a great spot for you.
Congratulations and don't forget to buy a horse and buggy. Am I close?
If this is the general remarks thread:
Is the Arizona birther bill something to worry about? It hypothetically disqualifies Obama from being on the ballot in that state in 2012.*
I haven't read widely in news today; perhaps this has already been discussed somewhere as something that can't possibly stand up.
* The "long form" birth certificate thing is a case of off-the-shelf legislation provided by rightwing think-tanks. It's completely ridiculous.
I can't imagine anything serious could ever come of it.
21: My sister's friend similarly narrowly missed a suicide off the math building at Berkeley by being just in front, which is a much better way to go; by the time she found out what happened she was too distant to be really traumatized by the near-coincidence. I suppose it's possible the poor guy waited for her to pass before taking the leap. Another friend was on the other end of the balcony--it was tea-and-cookies time--and saw the guy climb over out of the corner of his eye. I think he always wonders if he would have been able to stop the dude had his reflexes been faster, but everyone else says probably not. Now the balcony is glassed off and locked up during tea-and-cookies.
Another friend had his BMW---the prize possession which he gleefully splurged for upon making professor--parked on the major Berkeley (residential) street he lived on. One night, ~midnight, some guy took the Berkeley police on a wild car chase all over town before gunning it into my friend's BMW at some ridiculously high speed. There was very little left of the BMW. It took a long time for the insurance to send my friend the money for a replacement car, and the looks he got when explaining his carlessness with 'someone used my car to commit suicide' were pretty priceless. I'm pretty sure all indications were that the guy did indeed intend to commit suicide by cop.
Topical! (And very interesting.)
