Stories From University Police
January 2020 Chapter Meeting: Stories From University Police
By Kristen Lepionka
Ninety-five percent of police officers go their entire careers without ever discharging their weapons. The percentage is even higher for cops on college campuses. But if you think being a police officer at a university is like being a glorified rent-a-cop, think again.
When Officer Alan Horujko of the Ohio State University (OSU) PD fired five shots from his Glock to stop a terror attack in 2016, he became the first officer in the department to be involved in a shooting in well over 100 years (and the only to be awarded a Congressional Medal of Valor, ever). At the January 26 MWA Midwest meeting, Officer Horujko gave us some stunning insight into what a critical incident is really like.
A young man drove a car into a crowd of students, jumped out of the vehicle wielding a machete, and stabbed several people in the ensuing chaos. Officer Horujko happened to be on the scene due to a fluorine gas leak in a nearby building and had to act swiftly to contain the situation.
“People don’t rise to the occasion. They fall back on their training.”
OSU PD officers regularly go through critical incident scenarios and principle-based training, complete with audio and actors covered in fake blood. Not all police departments can spare their officers for such extensive training but even OSU PD’s modest size—70 people—allows it to rotate officers through these realistic trainings multiple times per year. The goal is to simulate real-life conditions and physical stress responses so that officers know how to act when something goes down in real time.
Stress saves lives
What are the physical stress responses an officer in a critical incident might experience? It varies by person, of course, but in Officer Horujko’s case, he experienced the following:
Tunnel vision: a narrowing of his field of vision that kept his focus on the attacker
Auditory exclusion: a temporary inability to hear. Officer Horujko described it as similar to the Hollywood-style post-bomb blast silence. He couldn’t hear himself speaking into his radio (or any response on the radio), and he didn’t hear the shots he fired
Time dilation: Time literally felt like it slowed down for Officer Horujko, allowing him to think strategically, assess the threat and various risks to civilians, and aim his weapon with accuracy. He said that the event felt, to him, like it had lasted about 45 minutes. In actuality, the attack was over in 51 seconds.
Mutual aid
Law enforcement agencies who operate in nearby jurisdictions often have mutual aid agreements, meaning that if an officer needs assistance, personnel from other jurisdictions can come to the officer’s aid (ordinarily, cops can only act in their official capacity in their own jurisdiction). In the case of the 2016 incident, agencies as far away as Cincinnati and Cleveland—as well as a team of FBI agents from Quantico—all descended on campus to assist. Although the attack was quickly contained, there were fears of a second assailant or a coordinated attack so it took hours to officially determine that the threat had been neutralized.
Cooperation with other agencies should be coordinated to ensure that people go where they are needed. In the case of the 2015 San Bernardino shooting, a lack of coordination caused confusion, and officers arriving on the scene blocked the vehicles of those already there. When a chase ensued, some officers found themselves unable to access their cars. Fortunately, law-enforcement Crown Vics are typically keyed the same, and officers were able to use their keys to "steal” cruisers from other agencies in order to take up the pursuit.
On a lighter note
We’ve all seen jurisdiction battles on TV. Officer Horujko told us that, although everyone wanted a piece of the action on that day in 2016, jurisdiction battles usually go the other way—where no one wants a piece of the action. He described a high-speed car chase that had started in a Columbus suburb, crossed over into the Columbus city limits, and came to an end on a strip of land technically the property of OSU. So who was responsible for the scene? In the end, the suburban department was on the hook for the traffic accident.
A few more fun facts for OSU football fans (sorry, Michigan):
On game days, campus holds 120k people in the stadium and another 500k tailgating
OSU police collaborate with 7 other local, state, and national law enforcement agencies on game days, making it (temporarily) one of the largest police departments in the country
Kristen Lepionka is the President of MWA Midwest, as well as the Shamus and Goldie Award-winning author of the Roxane Weary mystery series.