Do things all legal-like. We FReepers are famous for working within the system. You have criminal and civil recourse. Use those. Good luck.
The police would be obligated to investigate if reported to them. It would be the school administrator who called the police you would want to hold responsible- as you mentioned, they could have easily checked if she rode the bus. I wouldn't blame the police.
I went to bat once for my DIL’s nephew. He had supposedly “hit” a teacher, when, in reality, he turned and his backpack accidently hit the teacher. There were plenty of eye witnesses that saw what happened, this “hispanic” teacher with a chip on his shoulder pulled crap like this all the time.
They took him to the office and told him that if he didn’t admit to hitting the teacher they were going to arrest him. He wouldn’t admit to it and they arrested him. Then they kicked him out of school.
I was furious and I went and schooled the principal on the 5th amendment and a few other things, he told me that he couldn’t talk to me because I wasn’t the child’s parent or guardian and I said that I could become his guardian ASAP and he would be dealing with me. I also told him that I would be contacting the newspaper. I scared him bad enough that he backed off but the poor kid had already been abused.
Don’t forget to bring up the five officers. FIVE officers! That’s a little much even for questioning an adult. There’s many an adult who would later argue that they were intimidated into waiving their Miranda rights because they were surrounded by FIVE officers.
If I had kids in public school right now, I’d pull them all out and homeschool. Not a place for young impressionable minds. Homeschooled my youngest years ago and I have no regrets. The only regret is that I didn’t homeschool all my kids. Alpha Omega...excellent program.
“Part of me wants to freep the police office with a placard “Jack Booted Thugs Harass Children!”
I don’t believe publicly elevating the mess would be beneficial to your child. I’m relatively sure she just wants the whole thing to go away and be forgotten. In my opinion your best route is to privately take this up with school authorities and law enforcement to determine the status of the investigation and an explanation of the reasoning behind the approach as well as expressing your consternation about the way it was handled.