DOLLAR BAY – Three officers are walking down the hallway of a school. Two are looking forward. One is watching behind them. They are on the lookout for a gunman.

Suddenly the camo-clad shooter enters the hallway. As officers tell him to drop the gun, he yells back, “Don’t tell me what to do!”

It is the kind of tense moment no officer wants to see happen. But if they do, they’ll have the benefit of having practiced for it.

Local law enforcement agencies went through three days of their annual active shooter training, culminating Thursday in Dollar Bay.

This is the sixth year local departments have undergone the training, with between 50 and 70 officers trained each year, said Charlie Klein of the Houghton County Sheriff’s Department, the instructor for the training.

“The law enforcement agencies in Houghton and Keweenaw counties, and most of the Upper Peninsula, have taken it upon themselves to see that this is important enough where they do this training on their own, on their own dime,” said Jack Dueweke, emergency measures director for Houghton and Keweenaw counties.

The training rotates between schools, which familiarizes officers with the layout of each one.

“We just want to show the schools that we’re out here training to protect them if something happens,” Klein said.

This year’s training led off with a new activity – a rush scenario where officers playing students and teachers had a short amount of time to hide, followed shortly thereafter by a gunman who tried to find them, and then a team of officers in pursuit.

After that drill, officers cycled through two live scenarios. In one, officers came upon one gunman near the stairway to the second floor. As they secured that shooter, they heard loud booms coming from upstairs. Then another shooter popped out from a door behind them. When they went to the second floor, they had to neutralize a person with a bomb strapped to his chest.

In the other, a team checked rooms looking for a shooter, who eventually popped up at the end of the hallway in the form of Dueweke.

Inside that activity was an illustration of the importance of remembering the latest in procedure. Officers are now taught to yell “Police!” before going into a classroom, the opposite of what they’d learned in previous years.

On Thursday, when they went in without identifying themselves, whoever played the teacher fought back by throwing classroom objects at the officer – which in the heat of the moment, could lead to an officer firing on them, mistaking them for the shooter.

When school personnel train, law enforcement officers come, too, to explain their procedures. Those officers also get to see how the schools have trained.

“In the back of their mind, they know exactly what they can expect from the schools, and they can modify their scenarios accordingly,” Dueweke said. “It’s a great partnership between the community, the schools and law enforcement.”

The training could be useful not just in schools, Klein said, but in other situations, such as a workplace shooting.

“By having this training every year, our community is prepared to handle a situation like this,” Klein said. “If we weren’t training, we wouldn’t be prepared. We want to be there to protect the community in case something happens.”

Patrolman Kirk Mills said he’s benefitted from the training.

“It helps you respond better, gives you an idea of what to do so everyone’s on the same page,” he said.