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Claim: Video shows a suspect in police custody committing suicide in an interrogation room.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004] Origins: Movies and television have planted sensationalized images of certain phenomena into the public consciousness, to the extent that when most of us see the real thing, we're disappointed that it seems so mundane. In films and television programs, automobile crashes are always slam-bang affairs that inevitably end with one or more cars bursting into flame and exploding; thunder is always a very loud, sharp, and short report which occurs simultaneously with a bolt of lightning (rather than a slow, distant, gradually increasing rumbling which arrives well after the lightning flash); and gunshots are usually depicted as producing ear-splitting volumes of sound and, when aimed at another human being, resulting in plenty of gore and splatter. It's no wonder, then, that when the above-displayed video of a detainee shooting himself while in police custody began to circulate, many viewers were skeptical of its 
in the video, an uncuffed suspect enters an interrogation room and sits down in a chair, followed by an officer who dumps some keys and sunglasses on a table, checks his cell phone, and leaves the room momentarily. The officer returns several seconds later with a bottle of water and a cup of coffee, then hands the water bottle to the suspect, checks his cell phone again, picks up the coffee, and exits the room a second But what we see in the video is nothing like what most of us might expect. The soon-to-be suicide victim is neither visibly nervous nor distraught as he freely pulls out a gun and places it against his head. (He even replaces the cap on the water bottle before pulling the trigger.) The weapon does not produce an ear-shattering concussive sound in the small room, blood and brain matter don't splatter all over the walls, and the victim's body isn't hurtled out of the chair and onto the floor. The gun makes a sharp popping sound as the suspect shoots himself, blood streams from the victim's head and mouth, his hands drop the gun and water bottle to the floor, and his body slumps but slightly in the chair. Even more unusual to many viewers is the officer's reaction to this event. He doesn't respond with any of the emotions most of us might feel, such as fear, panic, terror, or digust. Nor does he rush to the victim's aid, check him for signs of life, summon help, or otherwise raise an alarm. "Oh, fuck," he exclaims as he re-enters the room, puts his coffee down on the table, and surveys the scene for a second or two, then adds "Holy fuck." When a second (unseen) officer inquires "What did he do?" he responds with, "Nobody shook him" (i.e., nobody searched the suspect for weapons), then calmly retrieves the keys and sunglasses and leaves the room. Throughout the short video, the officer's actions seem almost nonchalant: he doesn't act the least bit shocked or horrified that a human being has just died a violent death right in front of him. Instead, the foremost thought on his mind seems to be concern that someone's going to get into big trouble for the oversight of allowing a detainee to retain a weapon. (We realize, of course, that all of this would be viewed quite differently from a police perspective. Officers undergo thorough instruction in the handling and use of firearms, they generally see more blood and violence than most of us will experience in a lifetime, and they're trained to respond to emergency situations by following proper procedure rather than with fear or panic. We're simply presenting the average person's reaction to this video, as reflected in the e-mail we've received from readers who have viewed it.) The circumstances behind this video took place on 19 December 2003, when 47-year-old Ricardo Alfonso Cerna was stopped for a traffic violation at about When Dean stepped out of the room briefly to speak with a detective in the hallway, Cerna pulled the
[Sheriff Gary] Penrod said deputies failed to adequately search Cerna before he was put in a car, and again when he was transferred to the homicide division office. Each receiving deputy may have wrongly assumed the previous officer adequately searched the man, he said.
(This apparently egregious oversight led to conspiracy-theory speculation in some quarters that Cerna had been "executed" by the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department, or that the sheriff returned the gun to Cerna and urged him to commit suicide with Penrod said confusion among the three agencies "Obviously there was a mistake made," Penrod said by phone. "It was hectic and it was a guy who was cuffed by somebody other than the transporting officer. As the how the video of Cerna's suicide made it onto the Internet, sheriff's spokesman Chip Patterson said:
[A] ranking official at the department was authorized to show the video during a presentation on officer safety at the FBI's training academy in Quantico, Va., several months ago.
Sheriff's officials do not know who might have leaked the video to the public. Some of the officers involved in Cerna's arrest and handling were subjected to disciplinary action, but sheriff's officials wouldn't comment on the specifics of that action or identify the officers involved.
Following the presentation, dozens of copies of the video were made at the request of law-enforcement agencies across the country. Officials of those agencies wanted the copies for training purposes. Last updated: 3 January 2005 This material may not be reproduced without permission. snopes and the snopes.com logo are registered service marks of snopes.com.  Sources:
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