While school was out for the summer, Hillsborough officers trained inside schools, familiarizing themselves with individual layouts and focusing on responding to active shooter events.

The Hillsborough Police Department is the primary responding agency for incidents at schools in town, and the town’s officers will support responses to any school in the county they can reach. They train for active shooter events multiple times per year. The Police Department has access to school buildings to learn the building floorplan and walk through trainings during the school year.

“Some agencies don’t offer this training at all after basic,” said Lt. Richard Hooks, one of the department’s training officers. “We want to be a flagship model for smaller departments.” 

Summer Training 

During one summer day, Hillsborough officers trained at Eno River Academy, a charter school in the northern part of town.

Inside a back entrance, they reviewed the Police Department’s use of force policy and building clearing tactics, completed a safety check, and traded in their handguns for mock guns in the same weight and style but incapable of firing. 

An instructor signaled the start of training, and a pair of officers swept down the school’s halls to identify where the threat was located. After quickly making it down one hallway, the officers spotted an active shooter stand-in and isolated and stopped him. 

Following a round of trainings without ammunition, officers traded in their mock guns for special handguns that fire soap-based pellets, a safe paintball-like stand-in for live rounds. Lt. Nick Chelenza, standing in as one of the day’s active shooters, was given a rifle modified to shoot similar pellets.

“It makes it very real,” said Police Officer 1st Class Argie Burnette, “as real as they can make it for the sake of training.”

To start the next round of training with the sound of gunfire, Chelenza fired several pellets into a folded cardboard box. The rounds pierced both layers of corrugated cardboard before leaving a small paint mark on the wall, which was quickly cleaned up. 

“The Simunition rounds hurt,” Hooks said. “They help add a bit of that stress that officers would feel in a real situation. We use the marking rounds so we can provide officers feedback on how they engaged with the target, but it does add a bit of cleanup.” 

Instructing officers give feedback on form and technique, with the goal of developing muscle memory in the event of an incident.

On this particular day, instructors also demonstrated the close contact that is needed between officers while in front of doors. That close contact helps them stay in touch with each other’s movement. 

“You see improvement each time an officer goes through the training,” Hooks said. 

Officers have the opportunity to run the training several times, applying the feedback they receive. 

“I knew immediately what I did wrong,” Officer Peyton McCullough said. “You think about what you could do differently and what you could do better and how you can help your team.”