Calling the police to check on a crying baby

You did the right thing to report it.

Anyone saying otherwise is recalling that they have at some point left a baby crying and had loud/frequent arguments around them, and is embarassed a neighbour might've done the same to them to safeguard the child.

I have had knowledge of similar and advised someone to contact the NCPCC. They are usually very thorough, extremely personable and caring and without prejudice. I would thoroughly recommend contacting them. They will liaise with relevant agencies without ruffling feathers and get to the root and resolve things quickly.

OP YANBU. And it sounds like you weren't the only one concerned. What you did was sensible and responsible.

Ok ladies!
Make sure you say you heard a misgendering/racist slur too and the cops will then be dispatched with their blues and twos en masse.
Shame on you for not dispatching officers to this -what on earth is more important than a child’s safety??
I truly DESPAIR about this country. How has it gone to the dogs in 30 years?

OP FWIW I spend a lot of time especially in the evenings home alone with my toddler, I worry that if something to happened to me nobody would know and toddler could be crying for me so I would want a neighbour to do something (anything) anything to help. If nothing was amiss at your neighbours then no harm done, if something was wrong then they can get help.

different people have different thresholds for what they think is reportable. Years ago my partner was horrified that I called 999 and tried to flag down a police car for a little boy walking barefoot down the pavement next to a 40mph road after midnight, he thought it was a 101 job. The police dispatched several cars on blue lights and found him within minutes. I grew up with friends who’s parents were police officers and they encouraged us to always trust our gut and not worry about wasting police time if you could in fact be helping someone, after all the NFA calls take a small amount of time

Recent event have shown us more than ever that safeguarding children is everybody’s responsibility.
No woman in their right mind would go knocking on the door of someone they don’t know while a domestic is going on, at midnight, to ask if they can help.
The police IMHO are pretty useless but even they should prioritise this and do their job.

That's ridiculous

The thing is with these threads is, it affects nice, normal, loving parents who would never in a million years think of harming it neglecting their children. The idea of police turning up is scary, of course it is.

But there are kids out there who don't have parents like that. Who need the house to be checked, to have someone show up.

A passer by doesn't know for sure which one it is. Pretending that having a near stranger knocking on your door to see what's going on would go down any better than a police officer is ridiculous, in either situation to be honest. FFS there's a 20 page thread of hand wringing over a teacher posting a certificate through a letter box and the "anxiety" it caused.

I'd rather 9 parents get visited to be told yep, we can see things are ok, sorry to disturb, call this number if you need any support etc, if it means the 10th visit protects a child who is in danger.

It was a crying baby.

And unless there’s OP’s house and no other houses for 100m how can she be sure that the slamming of the car door came from the baby’s house? The same with the raised voices?

Yes to both of you. “Better safe than sorry” is a handy cop out for people who want to feel good about themselves but don’t want to be good enough neighbours to invest a tiny amount of time in knowing who they are.

It wastes time and as in your case - the police coming out to me with a distressed colicy baby would have finished us off and certainly I’d never have trusted a neighbour whose first contact was to set the police on us because the baby had colic.

“Better safe than sorry” is not a zero harm option and can cause problems for the very people you claim to be helping on this basis. Actually knocking on new neighbours’ doors to introduce yourself and leave a number if they had any questions about the area or services, connecting them to the street whatsapp or similar is the zero harm option.

As an emergency worker

always trust your gut!

always.

It was 30 minutes of crying.

Your children didn’t have colic did they.

FFS it wasn't just a bit of crying though, was it? It was prolonged, distressed shrieking that could be heard from several houses down the road, along with raised voices and slamming doors.

Yes it was probably nothing more than bad colic and hot frazzled parents. But there's also a chance it was more than that. It's a baby at the end of the day, I'd rather know I at least tried to get somebody who could handle the situation (whatever it was) to check everyone was ok.

There are several ways to cool a bottle down rapidly.

it doesn't take super powers.

Yeah well, I’m sorry for you that you were so stressed out, but what an earth is that got to do with this situation? You’re ridiculous.

Yes- this would have been terrible advice. If you were stressed out with an ill baby, would you want a stranger member of the public turning up late at your door demanding an explanation; and if you were harming your child, you're maybe the type of person to harm a well-meaning visitor checking up on you.
Report- don't investigate

She also had her DH at home.

Babies don’t seem right when it’s 30 degrees at midnight, for the fourth day on the trot. Crying is its only way of telling its parents that they’re tired and have had enough of this heat.

We’ve had grown adults, on here, this week saying the heat has made them vomit, given them migraines, they can’t sleep, don’t want to eat, don’t want to work, yet we expect a tiny baby to be full of the joys of Spring and be its normal self.

I had a similar situation once, though a toddler and an older child I heard shout once, too. First time I'd heard anything from them, but I could hear something was very wrong with the kids

I have a deep suspicion of police, due to watching them beat up my mum quite frequently as a child, so I did phone SS not police - who were worried I'd phoned them not police and told me to hang up now, phone police and call them after instead.

I also did go round - it stopped the screaming certainly, but all it actually did was alert them to the fact that everyone else could hear, which meant they then didn't open the door to the police when they turned up. Then there was loads of police shouting and threats to ram the door for ages, which can't have been calmer for the kids at all.

I think you did nothing wrong at all OP. I was an abused child and nay fucker did anything, despite there being every knowledge and opportunity. If your family noise is so loud and long it causes others genuine worry, then you shouldn't be surprised if they do indeed worry.

Well Obviously she would, because she wouldn't know that's the situation until
its checked out. Whuch she wouldn't have bothered to do!

The OP said the baby was screaming for 30 minutes and things didn’t seem right. Perhaps if more people alerted the authorities when they had a feeling like this in their gut instead of worrying that they were overreacting, there wouldn’t be so many abused, dead children.

Absolutely. Get a rapid cool and the bottles are done in 3 minutes. No baby should be left to scream for 30 minutes!

Yes if you hear domestic abuse. But are car door slamming and raised voices doesnt necessarily or even usually equal abuse.

💯 the right thing!!! Too many cases fall through the cracks, it’s a simple welfare check.