[...] Machine gun at Pinole Valley High, or not [...]
You make a very good point. I was mostly just thinking how sloppy this police work is.

Linky no worky for Yankee.

"All of the approximately 800 students were searched."

Yeah, pat me down, check my pockets, and check my lunchbox for that AK.

Since when is a rifle on school grounds a matter for the police? There was a time when many schools had their own rifle ranges as part of a well-rounded education system.

I think folks are not appreciating the population of Pinole. This area is only marginally less gang-infested than Richmond and Oakland. A very libertarian BART police officer of my acquaintance has been working in Oakland for a while now and has been utterly horrified to find himself expecting that every person he encounters in Oakland is a criminal in the sense that if he stops and searches they will be carrying either an illegal gun or illegal drugs. Richmond's worse if possible, and Pinole's getting there.

Reading between the lines, I expect that police here responded to the call, found the alleged perps grinning with no weapon, and quite reasonably assumed that every student there was a gang member and perfectly willing to participate in hiding a weapon from the cops. So they searched 'em all.

I thought the "machine gun" vs. "assault weapon" language was most likely poor or hasty reporting. Not sure about the 4th Amendment except that I'm pretty sure high-school students have very restricted 4th Amendment rights while on campus.

Yeah, I used to pass by Pinole in the Amtrak/Capitol Corridor commuter train every morning on my way from Davis to San Francisco, and muse about buying a home there because the view of San Pablo Bay was so extraordinary, especially at sunrise/sunset. The lights from the refinery were a beautiful touch, as well.

I am fairly certain that in a "lockdown" situation, if a search is indicated they will extend the lockdown period specifically for that purpose, because as long as the students are on school property, they can be searched.

It is probably an exaggeration for me to assert that all 800 kids are gangbangers. However, they do apparently get a lot of transfer students from Richmond, which is guaranteed to make a bad situation worse. My wife works across the bay in Belmont and her district handles a lot of kids from East Palo Alto, so she tells me stories.

The other interesting thing to me is that Pinole is such a small community, with a very small police force, that they obviously asked for help from a lot of other agencies. It's nice that the resources were available in this situation, but it cuts both ways -- it can make the whole response appear more "Waco-like" than perhaps was the case. "Air Support" was probably just some eyes in the sky to make sure no kids escaped the lockdown and ran off into the park to stash the AK. But it doesn't read that way in the news report.

I found an August 2001 California Supreme Court ruling that answers your 4th Amendment question. It's specific to California schools. I posted it in the other thread but I'll post it here too:

"The California state Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that school
officials' responsibility for school safety gives them the right to stop,
question or search students with or without reasonable suspicion. The decision
stems from a 1999 incident at a Los Angeles County high school where a security
officer searched a 14-year-old student's pocket and found a knife...."


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2001_August_14/ai_77199741