Zach’s recent dispatch from Montgomery County, Md., proves (yet again) just how important cops are for the Maryland school district:

The Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD) arrested an 18-year-old transgender high-school student on Wednesday in connection with a plan to commit a school shooting.

Andrea Ye of Rockville, Maryland — who goes by the name “Alex” — authored a 129-page manifesto detailing her desire to attack an elementary school, writing that she wants to be famous and describing her strategy for carrying out the shooting, Montgomery County police announced in a Thursday press release.

Those of us who remember Montgomery County’s sordid relationship with police, especially in schools, read this report with relief and great appreciation for the police who stopped Ye before she could attempt to execute her school-shooting plans. After all, the memory of that county’s first school shooting is still fresh. MCPS experienced its first school shooting about two years ago, months after the district defunded school police and removed police officers from schools. The district, of course, later reversed its decision (quietly). It still hasn’t reinstated school police fully — instead, the district allows plainclothes “community engagement officers” to patrol the area around schools.

MCPS spokesman Christopher Cram told the Washington Post that the charges filed against Ye are “extremely serious, involving alleged threats to harm others” and that the case exemplified the district’s and police’s “shared commitment to identify and address potential threats with due process before they materialize.”