Security Expert Balboni: Police Must Change Strategy for Hostage Situations

U.S. law enforcement agents must change the way they deal with hostage situations such as the one at the Orlando gay nightclub, Michael Balboni, former Homeland Security adviser for New York State, told Fox News Channel on Sunday.

The traditional hostage concept has changed, Balboni said. No longer is it a realistic expectation to save lives by convincing these people into releasing their hostages the longer you keep them talking.

The idea that "someone will barricade themselves and take hostages, that's not what these guys are doing, not what they demonstrated. Their modus operandi… is that they're culling the victims together. Not hostages, they're going to be victims and they're going to kill them in an effort to draw law enforcement in."

Balboni said the terrorists "create the epicenter there of all of the actions, and what they want law enforcement to come in so they can take down law enforcement."

He stressed that the only reason it makes sense for ISIS to strike at an Orlando gay nightclub is that they are "looking for targets of opportunity, where they can go in and hit as many people as possible. That's really what they want. They want body counts. If anybody has any doubt about how the guys don't want to take hostages, look at the people they dispose of like garbage in Syria and Iraq."

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