It's time to look at the other side of the coin. In may aspects schools are like a business and like a business, employees often work after hours. It's not unusual for a principal/teacher/custodian to put in some extra hours.
A principal/teacher/custodian is charged with protecting and ensuring the safety of the students, staff and visitors to their building within their charge. They are also responsible for the building and grounds of their school. It would not be unusual to find a principal/teacher/custodian protective and perhaps overprotective of buildings and grounds of their school.
Perhaps that day the school had an incident. A child was nearly abducted or the school received word of an abduction at another school and the principal/teacher/custodian was doing their due diligence to protect the children of the school by reporting suspicious activity to the local authorities.
Perhaps the school had been recently vandalized. Again the principal/teacher/custodian was protecting their building, protecting the tax payers' investment by reporting suspicious activity.
A man and women hanging around a school building, whether daytime or nighttime, saying they are going to take aerial photographs of nearby housing development can easily be considered a suspicious activity.
I'm not trying to justify the principal's or the police officers' specific response to that situation, but I can envision many scenarios that would prompt such a response in similar situations. I sure many of the parents of the hundreds of children, who attend that school, could think of many scenarios that might elicit similar responses by the police. A man and women, who have no children attending that school, sitting in a car saying they have verbal permission from a unknown person to take aerial photographs after dark, would be one of those scenarios.
A principal/teacher/custodian is charged with protecting and ensuring the safety of the students, staff and visitors to their building within their charge. They are also responsible for the building and grounds of their school. It would not be unusual to find a principal/teacher/custodian protective and perhaps overprotective of buildings and grounds of their school.
Perhaps that day the school had an incident. A child was nearly abducted or the school received word of an abduction at another school and the principal/teacher/custodian was doing their due diligence to protect the children of the school by reporting suspicious activity to the local authorities.
Perhaps the school had been recently vandalized. Again the principal/teacher/custodian was protecting their building, protecting the tax payers' investment by reporting suspicious activity.
A man and women hanging around a school building, whether daytime or nighttime, saying they are going to take aerial photographs of nearby housing development can easily be considered a suspicious activity.
I'm not trying to justify the principal's or the police officers' specific response to that situation, but I can envision many scenarios that would prompt such a response in similar situations. I sure many of the parents of the hundreds of children, who attend that school, could think of many scenarios that might elicit similar responses by the police. A man and women, who have no children attending that school, sitting in a car saying they have verbal permission from a unknown person to take aerial photographs after dark, would be one of those scenarios.