“Suicide by Cop”: How Police Present Killings as Unavoidable

American police speak in a peculiar lexicon. When an officer guns somebody down, it is an “officer-involved shooting.” When a department spokesperson speaks of “the use of force,” police violence is reduced to basic physics. “Fatality” dulls a plainer reality: that somebody has been killed. A less-discussed clause carries with it the same obfuscation of […]