Community should have been consulted

Fontana Unified School District’s police force has obtained semiautomatic rifles for officers to bring on campus as a public-safety tactic [“Calif. school-district police force gets high-powered guns,” News, Jan. 24].

This aim for safety did not require approval from the School Board, which appalled me. With the intensified gun-control debate occurring in the U.S. for the last month, it was a shock to me that a school’s police force was able to act on this without any approval from the school or the public community.

I believe it is important for school police to be armed due to the recent school massacres, but to take action with no opinions from the school and public community these schools are in is unacceptable. A democracy simply cannot be run as a democracy if controversial issues of today cannot be addressed in a community forum. A lack of community forum can lead to chaos of society as a whole.

--Jessica Fletcher, Bellingham