Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine arrested - The vindictiveness of the school and police overreach

The things police waste time on baffle me. Six officers? Is that how little genuine crime there is in Herts?

Reminds me of the time my gym called the police because somebody refused to get out of the pool at closing time. 8 officers showed up.

They made her out to be the issue, making her see a child psychologist who told her that Mummy and Daddy are making her sad and the boys involved (of which there was 6, all twice her size) were being mean as she annoyed them. Lovely bit of victim shaming.

@WillimNot that is shocking.

You’re either unbelievably thick or work for the school or police that perpetrated this appalling miscarriage of justice.

I hope there’s a proper inquiry into misuse of police time and that the police officers involved are disciplined.

The other thread is awful with posters sure the parents are at fault and glad they have their comeuppance 🙄

I agree with PP that it happens more than anyone realises
My DC (sn) had a terrible time in primary school. They needed to be out of mainstream but HT wouldn't support as they got a lot of money for having my child in the school. The money never went on support
DC told me they sat her in front of a cupboard at the school entrance as punishment. HT said they would never shame and punish a child so publicly. I tried to work with the school. I went to collect child and found them sat in the school entrance, hands under legs, facing a cupboard with a teacher stood behind
That was amongst many other grievances. I started a complaint and was barred from the school
No raised voices or abuse from me
The chair of governors told me HT is respected and they would always support him
HT actually told me on day that he was like a king with an empire. It was in a meeting that DC paediatrician actually attended with me so plenty of witnesses

Because if you are a parent of a child with SEN, even without the disability, you know the fight you go through just to get your child a basic education

But again, we are assuming that the parents' narrative given here is all there is to the story. If this had been a couple from some council estate, I doubt very much we'd be automatically placing the school/police in the wrong based on the testimony of said parents.

Why aren't we questioning more about this from ALL angles. Have all the messages to the school been released? How much do we really know about this? Given that various PPs have said you can't get the police to come out very easily, and certainly not mob-handed, I'd say there is something here that's missing from the story.

It just goes to show, in my view, that 'nayce' professional people are always innocent victims even when they aren't, because people are much less likely to look beneath the meek and mild veneer.

I'd like to see a full breakdown of information given to the police and messages sent. One poster has already said they have seen some of the messages and they were pretty vile. If any emails sent to the school were threatening, that would have been taken very seriously.

I find the assumption that all this happened over nothing rather concerning. What else do we gloss over on the basis that the people involved seem nice, decent sorts?

Nice bit if victim blaming there! Why would you feel the need to make this comment?

It says to me that the school felt things had got so extreme they asked for police help.

Even if it was “Entitled”

It was not illegal

The fact the school went to the police says more about
the school than the parents.

Have any of the other parents weighed in?

I can’t form a conclusion either way. This story is reported solely from this couples point of view. The police, school and other parents on the WhatsApp chat haven’t made any comment publicly afaik. I’m inclined to think that other perspectives would cast a wholly different light on events and this couple are on a mission to control a narrative that isn’t entirely supported by others involved but unlikely to be challenged given the fathers status.

I don't know much about the case, but I do think it's interesting that people jump to, 'they've done nothing wrong, look what good citizens they are' rather than imagining there is probably a lot more to this than meets the eye.

If they weren't a 'nayce' middle class professional couple, I wonder how different this thread would be.

The point made about your use of 'middle class' is valid, it stuck out in the original post.

As an ex governor, he'd have probably approved any social media policy you're describing as so offensively illegal?

Let me tell you how it comes across to me. (I'm a clerk in a school, governor in another. Parent of children with SEN.)

The guy stops being a Governor (not sure why) but then gets FOMO when the old head leaves. Bombards school wanting to know what's happening with recruitment. School politely refuse to tell a parent the ins and outs.

The guy demands whole group parent meetings. Won't let it go that he has to be involved or kept up to date.
Is so abusive to staff etc they end up banning them from playground. Now schools put up with a lot. More than most people realise. It takes somme pretty abusive and heavy handedness to get to that state

Then he gets bloody awkward. Email after email - probably a parent demanding instant answers from someone teaching his child and you know kinda busy. Then emailing again.
It honestly looks like he kept demanding to come in and talk about medication. Trying to get the round the ban. The school reasonably asks what he wants to talk about and he goes off on one - peeved because he's not getting his own way. So instead of writing it down - putting his kids first - he refuses and keeps demanding to come in.
Seen some of the WhatsApp messages. Described as banter by the couple. Well it's not. It's vile poisonous derogatory and vicious. Slagging off the school on WhatsApp is just not on.
Overall the couple come across as spoilt and too used to getting their own way. They're using their media connections to bully a school and governors who can't talk back.
There was obviously something said that prompted the school to show it to the police
So yeah. Spoilt, vindictive and quite nasty is how the parents come across.

Cannot believe you actually wrote this about a parent deeply concerned for the vulnerable child in an opaque school system.

Honestly, the amount of actual criminal activity going on in Borehamwood and these are the people the police decide to arrest 🙈 We have quite regular stabbings, shootings, drug growing, drug dealing, car jackings...

I don't know this couple personally but I recognise their names from local Facebook groups. Obviously can't speak on what they're like though as I don't know them. However, the fact that the school and police also threatened to arrest Michelle Vince, a genuinely amazing county councillor, for contacting the school on the parents' behalf is absurd. She is always speaking up for people and trying to assist in resolving disputes, it's her job!

There is a threshold for arrest and if an arrest has been made when this threshold hasn’t been met then the police can be sued for wrongful arrest. It’s interesting that in none of the news articles anything is mentioned about suing for wrongful arrest. Because if I had been incorrectly arrested and held for eleven hours I’d be suing…unless I’d been told that actually it wasn’t a wrongful arrest and i should just count my lucky stars i wasn’t been prosecuted 🤷‍♀️🤔. Will be interesting to see if the couple do try for a wrongful arrest action.

i genuinely don’t know what the threshold for harassment is.

Yeah, I wouldn't accept being told by a school what I could say to my friends (with exception of anything illegal or public and defamatory). They can't create unreasonable parent behaviour policies and pretend they're legally enforceable.

Many schools have ‘parent behaviour policies’ or ‘home school policies’ which tell the parents not to be negative about the school on social media. Which would include WhatsApp. Check the ones you know - it is (to me surprisingly) common.

This cannot be lawful or legally enforceable.

The cheek of it.

Many schools have ‘parent behaviour policies’ or ‘home school policies’ which tell the parents not to be negative about the school on social media. Which would include WhatsApp. Check the ones you know - it is (to me surprisingly) common.

In my experience the SLT hate not being able to be in control of the sort of situations that happen when parents start to talk about elements of the school they don’t like.

Genuinely shocked to read about the disgraceful treatment both your children and you experienced! Well done for contacting the police.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what the police uses millions of taxpayers cash for. They are so useless at solving burglaries, shoplifting and real crime, that they now have to busy themselves with this sort of nonsense.

Public servants and civil servants are now so out of control that they will fleece the taxpayer and then hurt them back. Lets defund this gravy train so that these useless morons don’t have so much spare time to go around terrorising the public.

We were trying to move schools in the interim but all were over subscribed and I was unable to home educate as both DH and I worked full time and had to continue. There were many times when I did keep DD off.
It was why we desperately tried to work with the school, but we were painted as troublemakers.

What is worse is this school was rated outstanding by Ofsted. Despite multiple parents raising concerns regards bullying and one of the comments made in the report being regarding the lack of lunch time control.

No parent wants to send a child in who is upset, but some of us are unable to just bunk off work for months on end.