In our county, I've never heard of the police going to the homes of people who didn't send their children to school, but I do know that we have a nice matronly-looking lady with a no-nonsense attitude who will show up and ask why -- IF the student is registered at our school but isn't coming to school.
On the other hand, if a parent withdraws a student to homeschool him or her, that's fine too. I know several home-schooling families, and I've never heard of anyone showing up to monitor the lessons.
We have truant officers, mostly they police the malls. Not that anything comes out of that either.
A truant officer will show up at your door (here) if there was a complaint (and some neighbors do complain about that, kids out of school, or anything else, even tried to talk some out of that). And the truant officer isn’t armed, btw.
So a truant officer will show up at a home, and then it’s done. Nothing happens.
In our area, cops have way more to deal with than kids who don’t go to school.
I only know of a couple home schooled kids and never has a cop, armed, shown up at their home.
You may not agree with the rights of parents to make decisions about education for their children, but wintertime isn’t lying about the police.
I personally know a homeschool mom who was faced with the police at her door. (A neighbor called because the children were outside playing during school hours.)
There are stories about the police sent to the doors of homeschool families. That doesn’t mean guns are blazing and bullets are flying. Even in cases where only a social worker is sent to the door, suppose that family refused to cooperate with the demands. Of course, the police would become involved eventually.
Here are some articles about homeschoolers arrested for homeschooling:
http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?ID=4611
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200801140.asp
There have been plenty of articles right here on this forum about homeschoolers ordered to put their kids into school, such as:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1940251/posts