16 month old assaulted should i have expected more support from the police?

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Feeling shaken up tonight a drunk person hit me, pushed my 3 year old over and my 16 month old who was in his pram she pushed the pram over i couldn't do anything to stop it happening. He did hit his head on the floor.

We have spent four hours at hospital who have said they don't think he has any significant head injuries. He has pre existing conditions that mean any head injuries have to be seen in a&e as he has false signs already for a bleed in brain etc so signs to look for concern are already there on him. At five months old he had an emergency mri with drs thinking he had a bleed on the brain.

This was at a family event. The attack was by a completely unknown person who doesn't live in the village. It took the police 33 minutes to attend. The dispatcher said they were coming from the local station 4 minutes away. By this point the woman had now disappeared. She had made further threats of harm - she had told people apparently we were pushing in and that's why she turned around and hit me then went for my children. We were in fact trying to find my son's friend who had walked off and with 400 people there it was difficult to see. The organisers were in the main area where we were heading to ask for assistance.

I don't know if i'm in the wrong but i feel very let down by the police not attending until too late, they said that they would have no chance of trying to find the person now and would only look if someone had significant injury. To me this is clearly a very volatile person and this happened to us they could well do this again. They said they would call in a few days time to check the child has no further injuries. My other child was literally telling the police that he had been pushed over by a lady and that she had chucked a drink at him. Police response we don't need or want to speak to the child.

Or is this now what society has turned into and is it normal to go to family events and have aggressive people / drunk people at 6pm in the evening.

This sounds appalling I am so sorry this happened to you and your two children. Absolutely shocking that you had to wait so long for the police to arrive as I would've expected something like this to be considered an emergency as children were in danger and physically assaulted!?

The only thing I could possibly think as the reason they didn't feel the need to speak to the older child is they may have felt they got the full picture from you and didn't think a young child could contribute anything further that would make a difference to their investigation? I honestly don't know though.

Regardless, what a horrible ordeal. Cuddle them close tonight 🩷 hope you are all okay.

That's absolutely disgraceful. You must be raging! I'm so sorry you've been through this terrifying experience, it must have been harrowing waiting to find out if there was serious harm done. I would want to make a formal complaint, but not while you're still in shock. Give yourself a bit of time to recover.

Absolutely shocking that you had to wait so long for the police to arrive as I would've expected something like this to be considered an emergency as children were in danger and physically assaulted

Unfortunately it's not unusual. I'm s Police Despatcher & allocating cops to calls is my main role. If its taken 33 minutes to get to what you've described then that's genuinely the quickest they could get there. I cant tell you how often I have a priority call sitting and genuinely have absolutely noone I can send. Its then a case of waiting for someone or going round my other colleagues to see if they have a resource I can use.

I sent one of my cars to assist in another area even blue lighting it took 24 minutes to get there

As a Despatcher I'd say PLEASE do complain about the response time. Its the only slight - very slight - we have of things improving

That is disgusting! Please complain! Your poor children. Are you okay after being hit?

Yes i am ok just in shock i've never been hit in my life and i work in mental health so do work in some risky situations at times.

My eldest has stayed with his grandparents and kept saying why did someone hit mummy why did they push me over. My youngest is now fast asleep.

I will be complaining from the dispatch end they were really good and said we are sending the local team out who are currently available and will be there straight away.

The officers who did turn up said we were told no one was hurt so we didn't need to come straight away.

I know police are busy but i've had bad experiences with them (should add as a professional) it genuinely feels like unless someone dies they don't want to do anything. An officer was raving on about how great the areas record was of getting cases to cps level for rape victims when asked what that was it was only 6%.

If anybody, man or woman, drunk or sober, had deliberately pushed my pram over with my 16 month old baby in it there would have been no need for police attendance,
I would have personally dealt with them myself in the most illegal way possible.
this would have been instinctive I am afraid.
I just cannot believe that you and all the other onlookers allowed this vicious evil animal to just walk away from this.

🙄

@FedupMum2024 well that's very easy to say and type but I imagine in reality, your baby screaming on the floor and your 3 year old crying and hurt, you wouldn't do anything except see to them and make sure they were safe
Not a super helpful comment.

Op I'm so sorry that sounds like a nightmare scenario and I would be shaken up and shocked for days. How can you explain a random act of violence to your poor 3 year old! I would definitely complain
Can you access the charity Victim Support? They may be more helpful and offer advocacy, counselling etc
I hope they investigate it otherwise put it up on Facebook imo

I think when she OP says ‘family event’ I think she means like an event for families, like a family friendly activity day, rather than her particular family. I also read it that way to begin with, but after she said about organisers and 400 people I sort of gathered she didn’t mean it that way.

It's a community led fireworks event surely

As in an event for the families in the village not a personal event. Which is what i meant as in family event. I have no idea what a chatbot post is? Every year a family event is run for the families in the village normally only 40 people or so. This year someone's posted on social media about a free event and the whole village had cars parked up everywhere. where i live is in the countryside so not a town not a place where you would normally have this amount of people. We don't even have buses that go near where i live.

I just know what officers had said from speaking to people. I have no idea if that's correct but it's what i was told after that she had said that and disappeared when the organisers were walking over. Genuinely no reason for this to happen no backstory no nothing at all.

And yes my little boy has been into the local hospital and been assessed and we are in shock.

Thanks that's what i meant it's been a hell of a day and i think i am still in shock

My focus was on taking my children to safety and making sure they were ok as they were very distressed and i was in shock. A man did get hold of the woman to stop her but he was with her.

I would never let my children see violence or see me ever harm anyone and i also would never in retrospect risk losing my professional registration or not be able to work to provide for my children.

I don't know how people reacted after as i had literally gone into a private area that no one could get into without permission to enable me to check my children were ok and comfort them.

This is horrible OP.
It happened here in Australia in a shopping centre recently. A woman walked up to a mum holding a little baby and punched the little baby. Completely shocking. The police sent out cctv images and she was apprehended. I'm sorry more wasn't done to help you.

"This year someone's posted on social media"

Obviously not for tonight but this needs looking at. I hope you and your little ones are all ok after tonight.

Geez, I googled for that and there have been loads of instances of random attacks on babies in Austalia in recent years, and the one who has life changing injuries from having hot coffee poured over him.

So many scumbags around.

Yes @Reserved101 the poor little baby who had hot coffee poured on him was absolutely awful. He's been so brave enduring surgeries and his parents are so brave too. Poor little thing

The police are not being funded, look at all the rural stations that are now closed. Then look at things like the lack of community support/mental health support are 6pm each day and at the weekend so that then falls to the police and its no wonder that an incident such as yours isn't a priority. Once the woman has left the scene theres no much the police can do unless another witness names her.

Sorry OP but that is the state of the country now.

I thnk we found the attacker

So no-one intervened? Not one person at a seemingly crowded event?

I really cannot understand why you’re doubting the OPs post at all. She’s quite clearly had an absolutely awful thing happen to her and her children and you’re picking holes in the story. Even if they’d intervened, what would they have done? restrained her for 30 mins until the police arrived?

Did nobody out of 400 people know who she was? I’m so sorry this has happened to you.

It's called the bystander effect, a man literally raped a woman on a train full of people and no one did anything.

Op, I'm so sorry this happened the police response in time and to the situation is shocking. I hope you can all recover from this, your three year old will likely be so confused.