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Local police train for active shooter response

News Photo by Julie Riddle An Alpena Police Department officer practices using a battering ram to breach a door during an active shooter training session on the Alpena Community College campus on Thursday.

ALPENA — Police officers wielding blue guns swarmed the hallways of Alpena Community College this week.

Training sessions at the campus Thursday and last week gave local police a chance to practice their response should an active shooter invade a school or other public place.

Officers from Alpena-area city, county, and state police agencies worked the dim hallways of ACC’s Natural Resources Center in teams of three, holding training weapons at the ready and moving in on role-playing shooters.

Trainers design drills to reinforce lessons officers already learned, turning quick response into muscle memory and developing the mindset needed to pull a trigger, said Sgt. Dan Lewis with the Michigan State Police Emergency Support Team, which led the exercises.

Police need to be ready always, because violence can break out anywhere, Lewis said.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Officers in a stairwell listen to instructions from a Michigan State Police Emergency Support Team trainer during an active shooter training session on the Alpena Community College campus on Thursday.

“That has a potential — in every single community, small and large — to happen on any given day,” Lewis said. “The whole mission of today is to practice stopping bad people from doing bad things.”

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Trainers handed out blue training pistols with chambers that can’t hold real bullets, loaded with simulation ammunition.

In a real emergency, they’ll use the real thing.

Recent tragedies involving gunmen in Oxford and Uvalde, Texas have brought school shootings into the limelight, but active shooters can bring danger to any public place, Lewis said.

News Photo by Julie Riddle A training bullet casing lies in a hallway after an active shooter drill at a police training session on the Alpena Community College campus on Thursday.

Stores, parks, factories, hospitals, parking lots, even homes can turn into an active shooter scene — including in rural northern Michigan, he said.

Last year, police from multiple agencies converged on an Ossineke home where a domestic situation involving a gun led to a four-hour police standoff that could have turned violent.

Classroom training alone can’t prepare officers to respond if such a situation turns deadly. Officers need practice, before the bad thing happens, Lewis said.

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Outside the Natural Resources Center, trainers demonstrate how to use a 30-pound battering ram to force a door open.

News Photo by Julie Riddle With training pistols in the foreground, police officers try on training gear before an active shooter training session on the Alpena Community College campus on Thursday.

In Uvalde, cameras captured police standing and waiting for the right tool to arrive before breaching a door.

“That’s not going to cut it in our world today,” a trainer said.

Some police agencies have started carrying rams in patrol cars. The MSP-Alpena Post keeps a ram at the post that any local police agency can use, officers said.

Other tools can get officers through a door that stands between them and a shooter, the trainer said.

A sledge hammer. A crowbar. Bolt cutters.

News Photo by Julie Riddle A training officer pats down a participant in an active shooter training session on the Alpena Community College campus on Thursday. Trainers checked all participants to keep live ammunition or weapons away from the training.

Even a patrol car.

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Officers divide into teams of three for indoor drills.

In a metropolitan area, numerous officers immediately converge on an active shooter situation.

In a rural area, with officers fewer and farther apart, only one or two patrol officers might have to take control of a shooter situation with backup many minutes away.

News Photo by Julie Riddle A trainer demonstrates how officers shot or otherwise injured during an active shooter incident can apply a tourniquet to themselves at a police training session on the Alpena Community College campus on Thursday.

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A trainer briefs officers at the top of a stairwell at one end of a second-floor hallway.

A school called 911, the trainer tells them. Gunman in the hallway. Multiple victims.

From the other end of the hall, a role-player bangs on a garbage can. Gunshots.

The officers in the stairwell tense, listen, go.

They round the corner, glide along a wall and criss-cross the dim hallway, surging forward in a semi-crouch, arms extended before them, hands clutching guns.

Role-playing officers lie splayed on the floor and propped against walls, moaning and begging for help.

“Gun! Gun!” an officer yells. Weaving between the downed bodies, they close in on the shooter.

Fake guns fire real blanks.

The shooter falls to the floor.

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With an active gunman on the loose, officers can’t stop to be compassionate. They need to know emergency medical response for a gunshot or knife wound, but they have to pass by the killed and injured and get to the shooter before that shooter injures or kills someone else.

If there’s time, officers can give a wounded victim a squeeze on the shoulder as they pass by, a trainer said.

To give them hope.

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With an exercise’s two role-playing shooters down, a team continues down the hallway, one forging ahead and two moving as a pair, left shoulder to left shoulder, one looking forward, one looking back.

Serious. Alert.

They enter a dark bathroom. Shots fire and fire again, echoing down the hall, as role-playing victims raise their heads from the floor in confusion.

Senses heightened by the exercises, the trainees had overreacted, shot when no shots were needed, confused by the sounds bouncing off the room’s small walls.

That’s why they practice, trainers said.

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An officer tightens a tourniquet on the arm of another officer “shot” during the training.

She was trying to be nice, the officer said, working cautiously to avoid pinching the arm.

“Not today,” the trainer said. “His pain is his problem.”

In a crisis, officers can’t stop for pain, even their own, a trainer told the group, leading a refresher on storing a tourniquet correctly.

Officers may only have 30 seconds to stop their own bleeding before losing consciousness, he said.

And other officers can’t pause to help.

Not when a shooter is still on the loose.

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An officer role-playing as a shooter rubs his arm.

The cartridges used in training guns won’t kill, but they still leave scars and bruises, he said.

Knowing how police are trained to respond, watching a trio of officers emerge from a hallway made him nervous, even knowing the guns raised toward him didn’t hold real bullets, he said.

Police response to an active shooter has to be quick and violent. Lives are at risk, he said.

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In a post-drill debriefing, a trainer asks one officer why he burst into a hallway filled with sounds of gunshots when his backup was still 10 seconds behind him.

“Ten seconds is 10 seconds,” the officer said. “It could be an eternity for someone in harm’s way.”

The public scrutinizes every second of police response to an active shooter. Officers will probably be criticized as having made the wrong choice no matter what they decide, so he might as well err on the side of trying to save lives, the officer said.

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Another drill. Garbage-can gunshots explode. Officers emerge from a stairwell, glide around a corner, guns extended.

One asks, afterward, if he fired too quickly.

He saw a shooter, saw a gun, and pulled the trigger, he said.

“That’s all you need,” a trainer said. “You’re going in to take care of business.”

Lawyers may protest later, saying the shooter would have given up if told to drop his weapon, the officer said.

If the shooter is poised to kill, though, “I’m not saying anything,” the trainer said. “I’m going to dump him from as far away as I can.”

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Some teams are tentative as they practice, some hasty.

Some are sure, swift, thorough.

Hopefully, officers will never need to put their active shooter practice to use.

But, even in a safe community, bad things happen, Lewis said.

“There’s assaults all the time,” Lewis said. “There’s assaults that could become violent, involving weapons. In all kinds of environments, all the time. These guys need to be prepared.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.

News Photo by Julie Riddle A trainer displays a simulated ammunition round used during an active shooter training session on the Alpena Community College campus on Thursday.

News Photo by Julie Riddle As a role-playing police officer asks for help, officers holding simulated weapons at an active shooter training session on the Alpena Community College campus on Thursday move into a hallway of the school’s Natural Resources Center.

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