Applebee's knife incident a reason to celebrate police training

By Timothy Chipp

When the call went out over the closed frequency radios used by the Town of Niagara police department, Vanik Aloian was down the street.

A suspect, the report said, was threatening people with a large knife at the Applebee’s restaurant at the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls on Military Road.

Aloian, a nine-year veteran of the department, made the short drive to the scene, made sure his body camera was recording, and inserted himself into the situation.

“When I was driving up, I was thinking it was a gun call,” Aloian said. “It’s not a situation you want to be in. But when I got to the scene … it was surreal to see something like that.”

When he and backup arrived at the scene, he said, the incident had gone from the kitchen to outside the restaurant. The suspect was wielding a large chef’s knife, threatening the victim.

Aloian said he was immediately caught between trying to help the victim or confront the suspect. His backup chose to draw his firearm on the suspect, Aloian said, which escalated the situation and forced him to act.

“I decided to get my TASER out,” he said. “I wanted to go with the less-lethal option.”

He said he relied on his training. But even then, the situation was tenuous. People at the scene were yelling at the officers, he said, especially after the weapon was drawn. That certainly didn’t help.

But when the suspect made threatening moves, the fired TASER didn’t work. For whatever reason, the electricity didn’t bring the suspect down. It took a second attempt to finally subdue the suspect and allow the situation to come to a non-lethal end.

The suspect is awaiting trial on attempted murder charges, Niagara Police Department Chief Craig Guilianni said last month.

Guilianni recently presented Aloian and the other officer at the scene with awards for their non-lethal efforts and nominated them for a national accolade awarded out of Arizona.

He said the pair did a great job and the town’s training played a role in the somewhat peaceful resolution.

“Training is important,” he said. “It’s why we train twice each year on these things, like use-of-force. The new academy has even more training, with a deadly force simulator. But at the end of the day, there’s only so much training you can do here. So, they did well. The best part was they were all working together. Everybody jumped in and did their thing.”