On Thursday, the Cloquet Police Department held the first of four active shooter training days at Cloquet High School. For many of the officers, it was their first time going through this type of training.

Officer Jim Demko was one of two instructors for the exercise. Both were trained by the National Tactical Officers Association.

“It’s important to us that our patrol officers are as prepared as they can be for all the potential situations, and most especially an active shooter situation, because that tends to be the situations which are the most in-depth and the most stressful and have the most moving parts to it,” said Demko.

There were an estimated 35 law enforcement and Department of Corrections personnel, 10-15 Fire Department personnel, and 8-10 community members at the training. The community members were all volunteers who played different roles in the scenarios. This included having makeup done to illustrate wounds that could occur during an active shooter incident.

Amy Cunningham works for the Air Guard Fire Department and volunteers for Kenosha Fire Department. She volunteered because of how important it is for officers to have this time of training.

“Practice makes perfect. It’s obviously a terrible scenario that nobody wants to think about, but you have to be able to work through it and you have to be able to practice it,” said Cunningham. “So if anything really does go down, anything really bad happens that we’re able to be at our best for providing the care and control of the scenes for our communities.”

 Cunningham had a fake head wound during the training and played the role of a vocal victim pleading for help.

“They just get us all set up and dressed up, give us kind of a persona and give us a little bit of direction on how to act or what they’re looking for. And then we kind of just go from there,” Cunningham explained. “For example, for me, with a head injury, a lot of times, you’ll have in a scenario like this, you’ll have some people who get quiet and hunker down and are hard to talk to and some people who are a little more vocal or get afraid and get scared and get loud and could actually be a problem for the responders who are coming out.”

Cloquet High School student Tierney had a fake neck wound during the training. Tierney said her mom works with the police, so she volunteered to help her out. The training was a team effort with everyone having the same goal and checking in with each other along the way.

“It’s nice that everyone’s helping. You can tell that they really care about getting people out, and they really care about everyone here,” said Tierney. “Everyone’s been so sweet and helpful, so it’s definitely helped the experience a lot, and it makes it a little bit less traumatizing.”

Although the injuries were fake, the fear is real for many students.

“It’s on the rise, so it’s definitely something that’s a bit more scary. Practicing this type of stuff definitely gets your nerves up and kind of makes you think more about it. Having so many threats, it’s just, I guess it is kind of something that’s in my mind a lot. Like, what to do, how do I get out, do I help other people, just something like that,” detailed Tierney.