History
While only formally studied in late 20th century, the concept of deliberately precipitating one’s own slaying by the provocation of executive officials may span back to the late Roman Empire. In 4th century northern Africa, a Donatist sect known as the Circumcellions (or "agonistici") emerged that held the concept of martyrdom to be very sacred. On occasion, members of this group assaulted Roman legionaries or armed travelers with simple wooden clubs to provoke them into attacking and martyring them. Others interrupted courts of law and verbally provoked the judge so that he would order their immediate execution (a normal punishment at the time for contempt of court).
Many modern cases that pre-date the formal recognition of the phenomenon have been identified or speculated by historians as matching the pattern now known as suicide by cop. According to authors Mark Lindsay and David Lester, Houston McCoy, one of the two Austin Police Department officers who shot and killed Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower sniper, believed that Whitman could have shot him and fellow officer Ramiro Martinez, but "he was waiting for them, and wanted to be shot." The 1976 death of Mal Evans, road manager, assistant, and a friend of The Beatles, who aimed an air gun at police and refused to put it down, was theorized as a possible example of this phenomenon. Some historians believe that Giuseppe Zangara, the man who killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak in a possible attempt to assassinate then President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, might have been attempting suicide by police.
Read more about this topic: Suicide By Cop
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To summarize the contentions of this paper then. Firstly, the phrase ‘the meaning of a word’ is a spurious phrase. Secondly and consequently, a re-examination is needed of phrases like the two which I discuss, ‘being a part of the meaning of’ and ‘having the same meaning.’ On these matters, dogmatists require prodding: although history indeed suggests that it may sometimes be better to let sleeping dogmatists lie.”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity. It is called a city of pleasure; but it may also very specially be called a city of pain. The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns. Its people are too prone to hurt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves. They are martyrs for religion, they are martyrs for irreligion; they are even martyrs for immorality.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)