The Des Moines Register reports:
An anti-terrorism drill based on a fictional scenario involving white supremacists angry over an influx of minorities and illegal immigrants was canceled Friday after officials of the school that was hosting the training exercise said they received threatening phone calls and emails….
“During the last 24 hours, the Treynor school system has received threats to their employees and buildings due to the planned ‘active shooter’ exercise,” county officials said in a statement.
“After consultation with the Treynor school district and the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office, we have jointly decided to cancel the exercise due to these threats which we must consider viable. The Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Department is now actively investigating the threats.” …
As I’ve argued before, behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated — both by thugs that have similar political views, and by thugs that have other views. And while giving the thugs what they want, by cancelling drills, ad campaigns, speeches, and the like may seem like the responsible and prudent thing to do, in the long run (and not even in such a long run) it tends to breed more thuggery.
Thanks to Michael Lorton for the pointer.