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.

Put a post up on your local Facebook group to see if anyone witnessed or had any footage of this woman. People are always filming something especially at an event

So you'd have left your two children, one who'd been pushed over and the other in an overturned pram, while you did...what?
Not sure about the "most illegal way possible" - stabbed her, perhaps? Or just rolled around on the floor wrestling with her?
You probably call yourself a "fierce Mumma bear" too.
Most mothers' "instinctive" response would have been to look after their children as the OP did. It certainly wouldn't be to endanger their children's futures by doing something that could potentially lead to jail time.
Some people talk absolute nonsense on here.

I'm sorry buy why didn't you cave that person's head in? You don't wait for the police to come and sort of conflicts. The police in this country are severely understaffed and seriously struggling to recruit, the force is pretty much running on fumes running to and from the same wife beaters and junkies who cause issues all the time. That woman got away with hurting your baby and child, you would have got away with defending them too.

FFS. Just think about why not maybe?

Op use your mental health training to explain to your child that the lady isn’t very well and needs help. That almost certainly she didn’t mean to harm anyone. He is going to need lots of reassurance. It will have shaken his view of the world.
Why did you send him to gps? Surely he would have wanted to stay close to your after this?

What if she was carrying a knife or a weapon? I would be cautious to offer this advice.

I'm sorry buy why didn't you cave that person's head in?

How many peoples heads have you caved in? How many physical fights have you been in? Do you carry a weapon in case someone who attacked you has one on them?

What if she was carrying a knife or a weapon? I would be cautious to offer this advice

It’s stupid advice, you really have to weigh up the person & the situation in split seconds. I grew up in a rough part of London & can look after myself but the main thing I learnt was when to confront & when to deescalate.

👀@ the self described street fighters

The woman was deranged - how do you imagine a typical woman is going to engage with her physically?

Agree well worth getting on social media to ask if anyone saw

The police response was shit but I do think we need to stop expecting anything from them at this point so we won't be disappointed

How absolutely awful, I'm sorry you had to go through that.

This is the flip side of years of government cuts to the Police and other emergency services unfortunately, what you've described has (completely wrongly might i add) become the 'norm' .
Less resources, local stations closed, less vehicles, struggles to recruit .....as you can imagine that's had a huge impact on response times and the service police are able to provide.
It's an absolute shambles and downright dangerous as the government was told it would be.
You need to complain, it's unlikely to change anything but at least you're doing something to try and effect change.

What a stupid response.
At that point the OP would have gone into protective mode. And done everything to make sure her children were safe.
In your head that probably means beating the shit out of someone. But that actually is most likely to result in escalation of the situation. It will almost certainly result in the children being more frightened. It could result in them / her being further hurt if this woman is stronger and more violent. Or could result in her being the one the one that gets arrested. None of which is a better outcome than the perpetrator running away particularly for the children.

And if the person died you could just walk away and not go to jail the police and courts would just say 'you are free to go, nothing to see here'

I do wonder the collective brain cells of posters on here sometimes

This. Did no one intervene at all? Surely someone must kniw who she is, I'd be demanding the police go and speak to her.

That sounds really distressing OP, so sorry you’ve experienced that.

There aren’t a group of police officers sitting at the station 4 mins away waiting for your call. They often cover areas over many miles and if they are 50 miles away they aren’t going to get to you in 4 minutes.

Police are under huge pressure due to lack of staff. It’s no one wonder there isn’t a huge intake of emergency workers when there is always someone complaining about them or attacking them.

Nothing they say or do seems to be right. The public always know better and have an opinion on how the police should handle things despite having no clue of how it actually works.

They aren’t robots. Also despite what some folk say they aren’t on great money, they aren’t allowed to strike and they can’t ask for a pay rise.

Horrendous.

I agree with a previous post about posting on your local Facebook post about the incident. Write calmly and don't use insults such as 'drunk bitch' etc.

You did the right thing in attending to your children because I'd you had retaliated to the woman, in her drunken state she may well have seriously injured you such as knocking you out and then your children would have been at the mercy of someone in the crowd helping them.

It's not life or death for heavens sake.,

I'm so shocked no one stood up for you and got involved OP and I hope you and your children are ok and recover fully. Symptom of living in 2024 I suppose and the walk on by culture that no one intervened or got hold of this woman and detained her until the police arrived

Quite honestly no. Please don’t tell a child that he should essentially forgive this woman harming him, his mother and his BABY sibling! Teach him it’s not acceptable. Teach him some people are bad and if they show you they’re bad to get as far away as possible and keep them out your life. Do not set him up for a life of empathising with other people’s mental health problems.

Especially in this case she has two defenceless children with you! You can’t escalate in that situation. It would be endangering their lives.

Assuming pp seriously injured this woman - and it was considered self defence, you can still be charged and prosecuted for ABH or GBH. Reasonable self defence is not the same as ‘caving’ someone’s head in 🙃

Then you leave the child fearful and terrified of a repeat, that anyone ‘bad’ can turn on a knife edge. It’s not about empathy at all, it is about the child’s feelings of safety. You create fearful, anxious, hyper vigilant children otherwise. It’s not helpful to their development at all. This is a one off and unlikely to ever happen again, this should be made clear to the child in language they understand.

The woman without a doubt will have some serious issues, as it’s not normal to stagger around attacking babies.

Op. Tomorrow contact your MP and get them involved. It’s not acceptable for this situation to have happened, and the police response has been utterly woeful.

Why do I feel like there is more to this story?

OP was at A&E with the baby…

Agreed!!