Cloquet High School Hosts Active Shooter Training for Law Enforcement

Today was the first of four trainings that will take place over the next week

CLOQUET, Minn. — On Thursday, the Cloquet Police Department held Active Shooter Response Training at Cloquet High School. Over the four sessions, around 120 trainees will run through simulated active shooter scenarios.

Members of the Cloquet and Fond du Lac Police Departments are going through the training. The Carlton County Sheriff’s Office, MN DNR, MN State Patrol, and Cloquet Fire District are also involved.

In order to make the simulations realistic, volunteers act as the shooter and victims.

“They just get us all set up and dressed up, give us kind of a persona, give us a little bit of direction on how to act or what they’re looking for, and then we just kind of go from there,” said volunteer Amy Cunningham.

“For example, for me, with a head injury a lot of times 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, get afraid, get scared, get loud, and could actually be a problem for the responders.”

Cloquet Police Officer Jim Demko said its important to make the trainings as realistic as possible. By running the scenarios repeatedly and debriefing in between, trainees are able to work on their communication and decision-making under stress.

“These situations are real and they can happen,” Demko said. “And unfortunately they have happened here in our community, last January at the Super 8. They’re real and they can happen and we want to community to know that we are doing everything that we can to be prepared and be ready and serve this community as best as possible.”

“You gotta practice it and if you don’t practice it you lose those perishable skills,” Demko added. “And so as a matter of the repetition and the practice, to try to shorten the amount of time between training in order to build that level of confidence.”

The next trainings at Cloquet High School will take place on Monday, July 15th, Tuesday, July 16th, and Thursday, July 18th. Community members should be aware that they might hear sirens, yelling, or other loud sounds on those days.