ShawneeDispatch.com

Shots rang out Friday in the hallways of Mill Creek Middle School.

But it wasn't another nightmarish school shooting - it was police training.

The Lenexa Police Department used the student holiday to train its officers and Mill Creek teachers how to react to a school shooting.

"This is training for the Police Department because a lot of officers don't have a lot of exposure to the schools," said Jay Richards, school resource officer at Mill Creek. "There's only one reason why a person brings a gun into a school and that's to kill kids, to kill people."

Richards said more school shootings are taking place now than ever. He pointed out a timeline of recent worldwide school shootings on the Web site infoplease.com, that listed four school shootings in February 2008 alone - all of them were in the United States.

He also noted several recent news reports where children in the Kansas City metro area had brought guns to their schools.

Mill Creek principal Tim Drake said it's a different world.

"Fifteen years ago, 20 years ago, nobody thought about any kind of this stuff," Drake said. "God forbid that we ever, ever have to go through this. I would hate to think I had an opportunity to do this and passed on it only to find out at another time that we actually had to deal with that."

Richards recognized that some of the staff members were nervous about doing intruder drills but said it could be compared to practicing fire drills.

"Years ago when they started practicing fire drills, everybody was nervous all the time," Richards said. "Now fire drills are no big deal. If (teachers) never go through any training like this, they won't be able to act as appropriately as they might have had they gone through this training."

When the officers entered the building for their first drill Friday, they came in through the office door and swept the room as they headed into the school's main hallway.

Receptionist Tammy Higgins' eyes widened.

"You don't think it will happen, but I guess it could," she said.

Richards said the officers were given limited information during each drill and had to be sure to clear a room and not pay too much attention to the wounded before the intruder was apprehended.

One officer acted as the shooter, wearing a helmet and hiding somewhere in the building before the responding officers entered.

The officers used blue FX rounds - training bullets - to simulate how gunfire might be exchanged.

Later in the morning, the officers performed a drill with Mill Creek teachers who practiced going to their safe zones in the building.

Engineering applications teacher Amy Bolt said once she went to her safe zone, she couldn't hear much of what was going on in the hallways.

"I didn't hear it myself, but another teacher said over the intercom there were screaming kids and the fire alarm was going off," she said. "I know it was really emotional for some of us. It's really scary to think about. You don't want it to happen here at all."

Before the drill involving the teachers, Richards reminded them of their responsibility.

"You are leaders of the students in your classrooms," he said. "Their safety depends on you being able to go through this and know exactly what to do."

Bolt said the drill made her think of more "what-if" questions.

"What if a shooter was a kid in my classroom?" she said. "That's scary to think about. I think that's anybody's worst fear as a teacher, that a student is going to turn a gun on you."

However, she said as a first-year teacher she was glad to go through such training.

"I totally believe it's worth it," Bolt said. "I know that we're like this today and this is just a drill. I'm prepared for those loud noises and prepared to be quiet."