Jefferson State Community College is in the business of educating people, but passers-by on Thursday might not have known what exactly the men in body armor with big guns charging onto a school bus were learning.

Thursday’s exercises were part of a “high-risk” law enforcement training being taught by Mark Bailey, Jeff State’s chief of campus police, at the Clanton Conference and Performing Arts Center adjacent to Jeff State’s Chilton-Clanton center.

The training focused on serving warrants, officer rescues, narcotics investigation, bus assaults and active shooters—basically the most dangerous aspects of being a police officer.

“You’re teaching a skill set,” Bailey said about the training. “You tell them, show them and then have them do it.”

So, officers equipped with armor and guns Thursday practiced boarding a school bus that had, for training purposes, been hijacked by a gunman.

Officers from the Chilton County Sheriff’s Department and Clanton Police Department participated in the training, along with peers from across the state. Bailey said there was a total of 35 participants for the training that began Tuesday.

Bailey said the training is important because the volume of dangerous situations officers face isn’t likely to decrease in the coming year.

“I don’t see this going away by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “These are things that are happening constantly across the nation.”

Christine Brown with Jefferson State Community College thanked the Chilton County Board of Education for supplying school buses used during the training, and Ellison Scrap Yard for donating a scrap van.