Does the general public in Buffy’s reality know about the existence of Vampires,witches,werewolves,demons,etc?
After seeing Buffy and Faith leave a demon body in an apartment i have to wonder what the medical examiner is going to think 
In Sunnydale people don’t see what’s in front of their faces. Not even the police. To quote Principal Snyder “The police here are deeply stupid.”
I think that if they aren’t directly involved (ie, the frat boys in Reptile Boy who were sacrificing young women to a large snake–heh) then they just aren’t aware of what’s going on.
Usually when weird things happen, they are explained away by some flimsy excuse. When Spike attacked the school in School Hard, the official story is that the school was attacking by a PCP gang. In Hush, the whole town was quarentined due to an “epidemic of Laryngitis”.
At first i thought that because of the mayors plans he had been covering all the events up.
Or that some “oblivious” spell had been put over the town.
The other funny thing was when the assistant mayor was found staked and the reporter and Joyce made such a big deal out of it,sort of a “i can’t believe it could happen in our town” thing.
When exactly how many people have been found drained,disembowled,or dismembered in Sunnydale?
Season four made it obvious that some shadowy goverment agencies at least knew about sunnydale.
Actually, in School Hard wasn’t it implied that the police knew about the vampires and so forth and were actively involved in covering it up? I seem to recall a police officer asking what cover story to use and Snyder telling him to go with the usual “PCP gang” one.
As the show goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that people are more aware than they seem; at least, they’re aware in a vague sort of way that lots of weird, scary things go on in Sunnydale.
I’m going to put this next bit in a spoiler box, because it concerns two of my all-time favorite Buffy moments, which I think people should really experience unspoiled. They both come at the end of Season 3.
When the senior class is giving out awards - “Most Likely to Succeed,” etc. - they finish the ceremony by giving Buffy a new “Class Protector” award. Jonathan makes a speech about how they all know lots of weird things happen in Sunnydale, and they’ve noticed Buffy’s usually around to protect people from them. An episode or two later, the gang seem to have little trouble convincing the whole class to carry weapons under their graduation robes to use against the Mayor when he ascends into giant demon snake form.
I think the population of Sunnydale is in a state of deep and chronic denial about the supernatural goings-on in their quiet little burg. People don’t like to have their perceptions of reality fucked with, and will accept the lamest of “logical”, “natural” or “scientific” explanations for strange and unpleasant events rather than admit to the existence of such things as vampires, demons, or just plain ol’ monsters.
Of course, there are a certain number of Sunnydalians who have had the reality forced upon them, most notably the Sunnydale High School graduating class of 1999, who actually saw the Mayor turn into a big snake, and fought his vampire minions. And the fact that the Magic Box does a brisk and profitable business shows that there is a sizeable chunk of the populace that has some belief in the supernatural.
Then there are people like Joyce Summers, who will knowingly invite drunken vampires into their homes, make them hot chocolate, and offer a sympathetic ear while they piss and moan about their psychotic ex-girlfriends.
But, by and large, the residents of Sunnydale have turned off that portion of their collective psyche that believes in supernatural and preternatural beasties. It just doesn’t fit with their modern, scientific world view, so they choose, consciously or unconsciously, to ignore the whole thing.
Probably isn’t just the people in Sunnydale. Things are a little more “above-board” in L.A, but even there, they make the occasional pretense of keeping up appearances. When Angel and Lorne were looking for the gate to Pylea in the library, they told the librarian that Lorne was the new school mascot. And there was the time Angel walked in on some clients with a dripping demon head, and passed it off as a prop belonging to one of his “Hollywood friends.”
I mentioned this before the crash: I think the supernatural has only recently become much more prevalent in the Buffyverse. Twenty years ago, things were relatively normal. The occasional vampire nest or evil wizard, but nothing like this Apocalypse of the week stuff that’s been going on since Buffy got called. I mean, if this is normal, some world-ending demon would have succeeded sooner or later, right? Law of averages. But, for what ever reason: alignment of the stars, forbidden dark magics, whatever, the supernatural is getting more and more prevalent, and people are becoming more and more aware of it.
However, if we agree that the L.A. of Angel in Buffyverse, then Demon Karaoke bars, Demon Spas, Demon brothels and Demon Wrestling appears to be fairly well known among the human population. I guess Joss Wheadon and the ME staff kinda thought: “Hey, our audience is buying vampires, hell gods, cyborg demons. All this is so far out there, we might as well stop pretending.”
Buffyverse is an alternate universe, going down the other leg of The Trousers of Time [tm]. Trying to fit logic into it will only ruin the experience. It gets silly and cheesy and really strains my suspension of disbelief, but if I think about it too much, I can’t enjoy the shows. So I let it fly out the window.