I notice that you didn’t demand a citation for the original anecdote. Consider what it would take for it to be true: did California pass a law treating police officers like sex offenders, prohibiting them from being within a certain distance of a school? Seems unlikely given that they still have resource officers assigned to schools and there’s no way that wouldn’t be a major national news story. Now, given our national obsession with gun rights it may be that they couldn’t stop someone white with a gun from walking near a school[1] but there’s a 0% chance they couldn’t monitor the situation and make their presence known the way they do every day for teenagers with skateboards or the wrong colors on their clothes.

Note to the deleted comment: note that I'm not saying that it's definitely untrue but simply that we have no way of evaluating it without something like a reference to a specific law or policy document, public comment from a named spokesperson, etc. There are enough levels of removal that the potential for misunderstanding would be high even if this wasn't touching on several of the hottest political issues at the moment, and that lack of context also affects how a lot of people might feel about it. For example, if this is true as written is that because there was a legal restriction passed setting a burden of proof for a police officer to interact with members of the public or was it something like the local sheriff not wanting to have an incident when a provocative local gun owner is insisting on their rights to free carry anywhere? A lot of people might have different opinions on the appropriate course of action based on context like that.

1. I realize some people might find this provocative but I'm thinking about how at two of the high schools I went to I had at least one classmate who'd brought a gun to school, and the second one had a mass shooting a few years after I graduated when some warning signs were apparently ignored. It's quite the contrast with the way hispanic students were “randomly” searched, and really didn't want to be found to have anything even as dangerous as a Swiss Army knife.

I can guarantee you that if a school in my particular municipality is under threat, police are going to roll in and roll deep. Morale or no morale.

I think people are confused as to the types of crime police are backing off of policing. Shooting up Walmarts, schools, or churches will absolutely evoke a robust response here.

Of course, I can't speak for municipalities outside of this particular county here in flyover country. But knowing police and firefighters the way that I do, I find it difficult to believe that any school under threat would be ignored.

If you're genuinely curious, ask LEO you're friends with in your municipality, or LEO among your own family and friends to get an idea how professional LE is in your area. But you shouldn't believe everything you see on the internet. My assertions included.

What knowledge do you have that it is true other than a thirdhand account by someone on a web forum?

None, that's why I haven't made a statement claiming it's true or not, unlike the person I'm responding to. That's what you do when you have no information.

Yet, you didn't apply that level of criticism to the parent post either. Some person's niece saying the police chief said it? Like that wouldn't be news worthy? Like the police chief wouldn't immediately raise that to the press because "look what these liberals are telling me now"? Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Seneca didn't say it was true. They simply questioned acdha's claim that it was false. This is fair to question. But I suspect based on the rest of acdha's post that "it's not true" was shorthand for the more reasonable "I'm not convinced that it's true".

Sure. But senaca wasn't upset how 01100011 got from "My best friends sisters boyfriend" to "That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police."