Aaron Cohen, a former Israeli special forces soldier, is an American counter-terrorism consultant who has trained U.S. military, police, and SWAT teams in confronting such threats. He says Alan Horujko, the Ohio State University cop who shot and killed a knife-wielding man on Monday, used Israeli-based tactics to “neutralize” the threat. Cohen spoke with the Sun about the method, which he has been teaching for years, on Tuesday.
Q: What is unique about these tactics?
A: The tactics he used involved a very Israeli-centric type of response. He initiated a single-officer response, which is rare for U.S. law enforcement. Patrol will typically wait for two, three more officers to show up before making entry into such a situation. The Israeli model doesn’t allow for that. There is no time. He was able to get directly to the threat via sprinting. The philosophy is: For every second you waste, another innocent person is killed. They engage using a point-shooting method, just focusing on the front end of the weapon. In short distances, where terrorism occurs in crowded areas, it allows you to get on target very quickly. Then there is the neutralizing head-shot to keep the threat’s hands from moving. This officer still fired three, four shots to the body, but if the attacker is still a threat, we sprint up to the threat to fire a shot into the head.