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.

You 100% did the right thing @summermumma2021 like you said, safe guarding is everyone’s business.
Better to do something and be wrong than to ignore it.

Obviously windows are not shut at the moment!!! Things are different this week. That is the point.

I'm sure the police would rather have umpteen child safeguarding calls that were unnecessary than not receive the one when it was.

OP, you did absolutely the right thing.

I don't mean to sound harsh here, however the reality of being a police 999 call handler is far from your straight forward rationale.
I did the job for years and it was not uncommon to have a murder, a couple of burglary in progress incidents and a stranger rape in a 12 hour shift.
And then the priority incidents have to wait on the active queue until frontline officers become available. This was a priority incident and not graded as immediate.
The amount of times i've taken 999 calls about 2 adults fighting that have ended in murder is a lot higher than I would have liked.
I'm going to stop making myself sound patronising now, it wasn't my intention. x

That assumes that they are not very busy and that the unnecessary calls weren't taking resources away from the necessary calls.

👋

retired police officer here. Child protection unit for 8 years. I investigated child abuse and then I was a trainer teaching officers and social workers how to investigate and how to interview children who have been abused. There’s not much point in me adding anything else because the response will just be “ you could say anything “. The main issues with the “ arm chair experts” (of which there are so many on this thread ) is that they have extensive experience of babies who cry for a long periods but presumably DONT have any experience of babies who are neglected or abused. Apparently a great many of them cannot put aside their own experiences in order see that these enquiries need a neutral response. We don’t know what the issue is and the only way we’re going to know is to make a few enquiries. Check the intelligence on the address firstly as they may already be known to police. This baby may already be on a plan and known to all the services which is why the police decided to go. The mother may be estranged from the father. There may be a myriad of information not known to the OP or any of you which supports the decision to go. Maybe there isn’t. Maybe there was just one call in but they felt uneasy enough about it to go and check. It’s not a personal attack on your parenting if someone turns up at your door asking questions. If you had the responsibility for keeping children safe… if it was your job. If you were going to be devastated for the rest of your life. If you were going to face a huge enquiry and public backlash because a child known to you was murdered or allowed to starve to death because the mother was dead on the floor, would you go or would you write on the report “ probably colic “

The OP specifically mentioned car doors though so presumably she can see it

They won't know whether it is necessary or not until they attend the incident.

How many times have we read child murder reports in newspapers where it says that opportunities to safeguard the child were missed?

@summermumma2021 Any update?

And how many times do we here about people calling the police and them not arriving for hours until it is far too late? Maybe if they weren't attending unnecessary calls that wouldn't happen. Maybe OP lives somewhere that is well resourced but it certainly isn't like that where I live. I am not saying that people should never call the police but there needs to be a bit of common sense. Unless I lived somewhere dodgy I would have checked on the neighbour first.

Just throw a cushion or a towel on the floor.

No it wouldn't. They are not an emergency/rapid response service and have no power to act in the moment. If you're worried about a child there and then it's always police.

As an ex child protection manager I think this a is a question of conscience. If you make a report out of genuine concern for a child's welfare then whatever the outcome you should never feel you have done wrong. I have actually had to deal with the deaths and irreversible injuries to babies and minors. The moral is 'If in doubt check it out'.

I'm glad you did this, we are all responsible to protect, whether we choose to or not.

If we call the police if a child is crying because it's better to be safe than sorry, then it's only logical that we call the police if we can't hear a child? Afteral both screaming and silence could mean the worst.

You've done the right thing OP. My son had awful colic and reflux and pretty much screamed constantly for the first 3 months! But you cant know what is going on and its always better to report anything that worries you- safeguarding is everyone's responsibility. X

Way over the top seriously my twins could cry for exact same reasons colic,changing,bath for even longer than you said
.sometimes it's sooth one then sooth next the restart with first again so ye as a mum of many I would have been very annoyed as you automatically trigger child services doing that also and what a process they are to get thru

You did the right thing. Your instinct didn’t like the sound or intensity of the cry and you acted out of concern.

Baby Preston Davy’s neighbours were also uncomfortable with the level of crying that came from that house and unfortunately did nothing. And they are not in any way to blame, most people would not do anything. But I think if anything is to be learned from his horrific life and death is that when we are concerned for a child’s safety then we act.

But what if this child was in danger?

Oh well that’s just brilliant isn’t it … and goes some way to explain why these things escalate to where they do.
”Lessons learned” and all that.
Whats the point of OP calling SS, they wouldn’t be open until the next day!!

My now adult DD frequently cried for up to an hour at a time when she was a baby,I could do nothing to console her. So glad that I didn't have neighbours who called the police every time she cried for more than half an hour!

You did the right thing … I wouldn’t even know how to get in touch with my local SS anyway!

What if any child is in danger? Shall we send police to every house in the country as i am sure most babies have cried for 30 minutes at least once and I am sure a large proportion of new parents have argued.

Exactly.

In January 1973, in Whitehawk in Brighton, a little girl called Maria Colwell was killed by her stepfather. Afterwards numerous neighbours reported seeing that child stealing food from dustbins. It appeared that too many people took the view that it wasn’t their business. Now here we are, 52 years later, and still there are people who think the OP should give the parents the benefit of the doubt. A young child crying loudly for a long time, could, as some of you have said, be a colicky baby. But think about it, the mother of the child could be at the end of her tether. May have PND, may benefit from the support of social services if the police call them in. Or the baby may be saved from a dire situation by the police being called.