Calling the police to check on a crying baby

[summermumma2021]

Just had to call the police to check on a new neighbours baby. What would
you have done in this situation?
New neighbours live down our road around 100m away from us and could hear loud very distressed crying for over half an hour.

It sounded like a newborn or young baby crying and so I assumed they’d settle or some attempt to comfort them would be made but the crying stayed at the same level for ther period time. I could also hear raised voices and car doors slamming and I asked my husband if he’d heard it too (he was downstairs) and he said yeah he was worried as well.

Anyway in hoping it was nothing and the little one is fine but it just didn’t sit right and it sounded like no attempt to comfort them was being made at all.

i have no idea who the new neighbours are as it’s quite far from our bit of the road but for it to be that loud from this distance didn’t seem right. I have also had three colicky babies so I do know babies can cry for periods of time but as I said it sounded like no attempt to help them was being made.

Anyway police treating it as a priority case and checking things out. Just wanted to share really as worried.

Social services are not an emergency service, they have no power of entry and go out alone with no back up team to call on who can blue light there. OP heard a domestic dispute, doors slamming and a baby distressed for an hour. It's probably nothing, but if you didn't take action on that call and the baby had been injured/left alone ill and deteriorated but it wasn't picked up until a few days later when social services get in, you'd be under a lot of scrutiny.

This is so so well said 👏 ❤️

They didn't even knock upstairs.

DD wouldn't settle for over an hr in the heat when she was a baby. It happens. There were 2 adults in your house OP. One of you could have checked on them.

Did police come?
did baby stay settled ?

My eldest son used to scream for hours and absolutely nothing could comfort or stop him. We were known in the neighborhood as "the people with the crying baby". Thank god none of them called the police on me. Caring for my beloved child was stressful enough.If someone had added to that stress the terrible fear that I was suspected of child abuse and might lose the baby who meant the world to me, I think I would have broken. I feel so sorry for your poor neighbor.

who cares, it was 40 yrs ago. You weren't arrested and thrown in a cell, your kid wasn't taken away by SS, you're clinging to a minor event like it defined your life.

get. over. it

I would have gone and checked. If all is ok the last thing parents struggling with a young baby in the heat need is police turning up on their doorstep. If after checking I was worried then I would call the police.

It’s not advised for people (whether OP or her husband) to get involved in domestic disputes. This was part of the concern that OP and her husband had, that caused them to feel uneasy about the crying. It wasn’t crying in isolation.

What do you think the foster parents of baby Preston would have said to a neighbour about his crying?

Knocking o the door in the middle of the night when you think there could be a domestic going o and a child at risk is entirely different to asking a woman wandering the street calling for Mittens.

Yeh my first born would easily cry at peak intensity for 30 mins despite all the rocking/ cuddling in the world. Not sure how you have determined no attempt to settle was happening unless you also have camera in their house

So he comes to the door, tells you "ah new babies, heat, colic, so sorry, we're trying" and despite the wailing continuing you're reassured.

What exactly do you know now? Nothing. You've just potentially made him angrier.

I would assume hearing adults shouting was a factor in the OP deciding to report it - I bet you weren't shouting at your crying baby as part of your attempts to soothe!

Those saying OP should have gone down there, what if it was a domestic and the bloke (or woman) got nasty with her as well? She did the right thing.

You called the right service OP. I think people are missing the fact that you heard a domestic dispute and are also mistaking social services as an emergency service, which they are not.

Did you also shout and slam doors?

I didn’t say to knock, I said to walk past. They’d have had more of an idea of what was going on then.

I lived next door, in a semi detached house, to a woman who abused her children. It didn’t sound like a baby crying on a hot night, few raised voices and a car door slamming, it was relentless. I could hear the slaps and punches through the walls, I could hear the screams in pain, I could hear the shouting like I’ve never heard before, and I could hear the sound of doors and god knows what else slamming. I was on incredibly strong painkillers after having an operation but the noise would still wake me up. It made one of my DC so unwell they ended up under CAHMS. And yes, I did report it, time and time again. Then they moved. Like they always did.

You wouldn't need to announce "Excuse me, I'm assessing the situation before I call the police" or talk to them at all, you could have just walked passed, maybe said hi if it seemed appropriate, to get a better idea of the situation.

I'd have done the same. Not for a baby crying on its own, but in the context of the shouting and slamming of car doors. I'd be as worried about a domestic violence incident, as the baby. It is VERY hard to listen to a baby crying at that intensity for that long, so I'd have assumed the mother was physically unable to do anything, and I'd worry. And deffo not insert myself in the drama.

Would you really at midnight have knocked on the door of people you dont know and asked them if they were alright?

I think that's quite an unusual thing to do, would you expect someone neglecting or mistreating a baby to have happily told you that's what they were doing? Then what?

I didn’t say I would have knocked the door, although I appreciate my post might have read like that.

When DS had his first baby vaccinations at 8 weeks, he screamed inconsolably for hours and his whole leg swelled up. We were so worried we took him to OOH doctor at 9pm.
Apparently, that reaction is 'within the realms of normal'. We definitely tried everything and he didnt stop.

What would you checked?

That there was indeed a baby crying, shouting, door slamming?

@summermumma2021 why did you feel the need to post about this on MN? Have you got you needed from this thread?