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

[Everanewbie]

AIBU to worry that this type of incident seems to be happening more and more? To me, there are several concerning aspects to this story. Here is a link if you aren't yet aware.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/mar/29/parents-arrested-by-hertfordshire-police-for-complaining-about-daughters-school

Firstly, the apparent opaqueness of a public organisation and attempts to shut down private conversation and the vindictiveness the school has shown in attempting to silence this couple.

Secondly, the treatment of the pupil whereby she is being dropped off an escorted into school, and inability to discuss he disability and SEN with teachers, leading to multiple emails that were ultimately used against the couple.

And thirdly, WTF are the police doing? 6 Officers to arrest a meek professional couple, in front of their daughter. Holding them in a cell for 11 hours? Why are the police not dismissing this out of hand? I have always tried to be a supporter of the police, but how can reasonable people continue to accept this when they wont attend a burglary or detain shoplifters, but turn up in force for a middle class couple who called a governor a control freak in a private conversation?

The letter that shows this.

Which bit of the letter?

Thing is, we know there are parents who are aggressive and will scream and shout at teachers and we all (hopefully) agree that this should not be allowed, nor should vindictive or bullying behaviour. It would be legitimate to ban parents if this had happened.

However, it seems in this case this is not what happened. The criticisms I've read were not vicious or personal. Calling someone a control freak who is attempting to police the contents of a private whatsapp group that doesn't include them might not be particularly "nice" but it's not exactly inaccurate either.

The school might not have "set" the police on this couple but they did set things in motion. I'd expect that sort of response to be reserved for much more serious offences.

I also understand that the police have to investigate in order to gather evidence, but I would hope that they would have at least some very strong reason to start this process in the first place, which again seems not to be the case here.

They can’t afford glue sticks but they’ve paid for legal advice, really?

Neither letter that has been posted (by me. I assume these are the ones you mean) on this thread imply, infer or state that they have taken legal advice on this matter and are implementing said advice so no, it is not evident that they have taken legal advice on this matter.

The legal team is part of the services they have access to alongside everything else. You do know certain things are ring-fenced in schools budget wise so the PE budget cannot be transferred for glue sticks or legal services for example. The budget is set with each element being ring-fenced.

It is very clear that legal advice has been shared with the letter.

Do you know the school?

Nope but I know how school budgets work. I also know how legal teams work within schools for such matters.

Do you know the school?

What comments were before the 'control freak'? Given the school has had to have responded to something in order to be called a control freak or else if there were no comments prior to that then the issue never happened.

So my query is - what are the comments that lead to this? The comments that the family have not shared.

The whole letter.

You cannot be reasoned with.

You asked a question. I answered.

Not that difficult. Why ask if you do not wish to hear the answer.

Whippy, I'm not arguing with you as I don't think that'd be productive. More just making a general point.

I think that the school/police response was over the top in this case.

If you click on 'edited' it will show you the post pre-edit, so you can see exactly what was said.

You are well within your rights to believe that and make that statement.

Not sure why you wanted to mention what you were doing to me though?

That's actually really helpful, I was trying to work out how to do it!

Why are you bringing rape into this? Parents calling a teacher a control freak isn't anything similar to it, please stop using ridiculous comparisons. This was all done via electronic communication, of which there will be copies on the sender and recipient devices. None of these have been enough to prosecute. We all know the rape stats are appalling and the whole point is the police should be focusing resources on those real crimes rather than petty disputes that the school can't handle themselves in an adult manner.

They couldn’t “stop harassing them” because they weren’t doing so in the first place, at all, as the police investigation concluded. HTH.

They joked saying they had done so I will go off their word, they said they had been doing it so their words are what I read.

Nope the police investigation didn't conclude that they hadn't. The police didn't conclude either way.

Listen 3 min 30 in https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0029hwt
Think you might be the only one who can't see the obvious here @whippy1981

No they did not. They mocked the absurd letter sent to all school parents demanding that parents were not to discuss the school in private conversations and saying they would “take action” if parents did so despite this being completely outside the school’s authority or jurisdiction. In the Whatsapp messages parents were therefore laughing about the absurdity of the letter and the control freakery of the Head Teacher even thinking that the school should be able to control the private conversations of adults simply because their children happen to attend the school the Head works at, so they said “what will they do, send the police around because someone said hurty words?”. Clearly they were joking because it was unthinkable to them that a school would even attempt to do that, or that the police would go along with it given having private conversations that someone else doesn’t like - which they shouldn’t be spying on anyway - is not a crime. Sadly the school were actually barmy enough to make a false crime report and the police were incompetent enough to go along with it despite already being in possession of all of the evidence proving that no crime had taken place.

The parents joking about the absurdity of the school’s attempts to impose demands on who parents can talk to, and how, was rightly mocked, and is in no way any admission of harassment. You seem to be incapable of understanding written language which is rather concerning if you work in education.

And how odd that you want to “go off their word” (that you have misunderstood) about this issue, yet have stated you are determined not to believe their word about the entirety of their account of events. How very convenient and selective your beliefs are.

It isn't misunderstood when they admitted they did in fact do it. They also omitted all the rest for an unknown reason.

You do realise that people can tell the truth and lie at different times. Now when speaking with their mates they are all billy big bollocks. When with the media it is daily mail sad face I never did a thing wrong but will not share the evidence.

Make from that what you will. I make from it there is a reason they refuse to share the evidence. Why hide it if you have not done a thing wrong?

Because petty bickering in WhatsApp groups is not even fun for people who are in them through choice?

You say evidence but we have no evidence of anything else, in fact we have more evidence that there was no evidence than any evidence of what the school accused them of.

We have evidence that they omitted the messages. They have only shown some not all.

Well, fortunately, objective reality exists regardless of your weird conjectures and fantasised narrative of what happened. The police have reviewed all communications between the school and parents as - at the school’s behest - all communications between them for over 6 months prior to the arrest were in writing, so there’s no subjectivity or doubt or different memories of events to be considered: the police have reviewed every single communication that there was. They have also seen all of the parents’ private communications with friends and family via Whatsapp, which were none of the school’s business to begin with. And having reviewed all of this they have determined that there was no crime committed, no evidence to support the school’s false allegation that the parents’ behaviour met the definition of “harassment” or “malicious communications”.

Since you seem to believe that the police were wrong, and presumably you wouldn’t just be making this up and have some evidence to back up your spiteful comments about the parents, perhaps you’d like to share the evidence supporting your assertions with everyone else?