Mother followed home by plain clothes policeman for threatening to smack her child in a supermarket!

[wheelsonthebus]

Extraordinary.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1226056/Mother-trailed-policeman-warned-council-telling-son-checkou t.html

edam - a policeman is never off duty, even if not on their own patch,

No, I'd prefer the police to act on any actual concerns straight away - all this following home and then taking six weeks to contact the mother is ridiculous. The police should be able to use their discretion/common sense.

I don't like smacking - have to confess to doing it once or twice but regret it very much - but it is not illegal.

Yeah, but my neighbour does take it to ludicrous extremes! He chases people round our road if he thinks they have parked badly, leaves notes on cars that are parked perfectly legally starting 'I am a police officer who lives in this road' etc. etc. etc.

I know another officer who lives round here and works in London - he saves his crimefighting for actual crime. Chased a mugger in our nearest town for instance and caught him. Good for him but very different from my busybody neighbour.

Your neighbour does sound very OTT.

As others have said - I doubt the police just sat around and waited for 6 weeks. I would iagine other stuff was going on, maybe waiting for some investigation stuff to come back, etc. We only know what this woman has decided to have splashed all over the contents of a tabloid paper after all.

It just doesn't make sense to me that the police officer thought the woman was about to give her child 'a good hiding' and obviously took that to mean a beating or something beyond a perfectly legal smack - yet he didn't even attempt to talk to her or find out more straight away. In ye olden days when I was young, a police officer would have just had a word and any investigation would have followed on from there.

Hulababy, I think the woman has a point. She now has this all on her record, and it will stay there until her youngest at now 4, is 18, so 14 years.
And god forbid if she does need to take her child to a&e, questions will be asked.
Questions re a mum, for whom, once he investigation finished, no charges were made. There were no concerns.
But it is still there. and she can not iradicate that.

She bought it to attention, because she feels it is an over-reaction.
If no chearges were made, then she has been vindicated. Yet it remains there. And there is nothing that she can do about it.

Say, If a husband was accused of being a rapist. then found to be totally innocent. It might pain the person to have possible rapist on his file.

my dad used to say things like that 'i'll give you a good hiding' etc. he is (and was) a big softy who let us get away with pretty much anything.

it is a turn of phrase.

i think this shows that some people need to keep a sense of perspective. there are children really being abused out there - this sort of rubbish takes time & resources away from helping them.

although i didn't increase the DMs web traffic one iota by bothering to read their drivel.

So should such records be deleted and not saved?

And if there is anther issue int he future requiring police attnetion?

The alternative is not keeping the record. And as you have pointed out previously, abusers can do a very good job of disguising it, nay fooling the authorities into not noticing ongoing abuse. You either keep all records or none of them because all investigations are carried out on the basis of reasonable suspicion. Fair enough, you haven't done anything, no charges brought. There will, however, be a healthy number of abusers whom the system fails to catch the first time round, as history tells us. This is why we keep records.

Edgar, yes it can be a turn of phrase. Like I already said, I can say 'I'm coming to get you' and chase my dd. She laughs and runs in joy. Another parent can say the same thing and it can mean something entirely different. The officer concerned heard the tone and saw a definite reaction from the children and reacted to this. While we were not there, we cannot say it was a throwaway comment.

And 'this sort of rubbish'? What if she was abusing them? You are confusing the outcome with the method. If the officer had uncovered systematic abuse of the child this thread would read 'thank God s/he used his/her instincts'.

Sadly we live in a society where the authorities are obsessed with keeping tabs on all of us. Look at the new vetting and barring scheme which is going to be end up covering something like half of all adults! Plus DNA kept on police database even from innocent people - witnesses let alone people who have been suspected of doing something wrong or cleared, more CCTV than any other country in the world (ludicrous stat like four cameras per person, or possibly one for every four people...). Madness.

And all this 'we have to keep records in case there are any further concerns' line just treats everyone as suspects even when they have been cleared and no crime exists. People cite Ian Huntley but the concerns about him were bloody serious, not just saying something that could be misinterpreted to a child.

DNA kept illegally btw, but the govt. couldn't give a toss about the actual law when it applies to them, not us.

The police officer did not act correctly. He should have 'placed himself on duty'and spoken to the woman there and then. If he had immediate concern for the children then he should have acted immediately.
Also he should not have followed her home, this amounts to unauthorised covert surveillance and contravenes the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.

Well, she shouldn't threaten her children then, should she?. According to the police it was the children's reaction that caused concern.

I 'threaten' ds all the ruddy time! Usually with 'when I was little, I'd have got a smacked bottom for that' or 'walk nicely or we won't be going to the sweetie shop' or, in a joking tone of voice 'I'm going to smack your bottom' - ds knows perfectly well it's a joke but some busybody like my over-enthusiastic neighbour could well pretend they thought it meant something more, just to have an excuse to do some busybodying.

Have never said 'you'll get a good hiding' though - but some people do say it without intending severe physical violence. While others may mean something very nasty indeed. It's in the culture of that family, tone of voice, etc. etc. etc. - things officials who are worried about the paper trail and meeting regulations may well feel unable to consider.

I 'threaten" mine all the time too, usually with drowning or leaving on a hillside. But they laugh - they don't react in a way that would make an experienced police officer would be concerned about their safety.

Not necessarily an experienced police officer though, could have been a PCOS for all we know.

so you want to defend a policeman going beyond their authority and the protocol governing their behaviour do you?

i'm sure there is a set guideline response for a policeman to act on a suspicion raised whilst off-duty. this isn't it.

and my dad did mean it threateningly, he meant we might get a smack or (worse) no pudding. we would generally be very subdued by said expression.

my strongest reprimand to DD is 'That's Not Nice' - this can reduce her to tears. little kids can be very easily upset, so the mere fact of the effect of the words really is no guideline.

My dad used to threaten 'a good hiding' as well. It didn't mean we were going to be beaten up by any stretch of the imagination. The most we ever got was a smacked bottom, and that was rare. Many of you may not approve but it certainly wasn't illegal.

In what way did the policeman in the case in question go beyond his authority?

I didn't say the effects of the words were a guideline. I don't know the ins and outs of this case as it happens. I am responding solely to the notion of an off duty police officer believing there to be something of concern in the way a parent addresses his/her child and the retention of records. As a non-police officer I know feck all about guidelines. If guidelines have not been followed then the people to are inform are that police service and the officer should be disciplined accordingly.

I stand by my belief that it is better somebody do something and it resolves with a happy ending than everybody turn a blind eye and abuse continue unchallenged.

Nobody has said what she said was illegal in itself. That's why the investigation was carried out, to ascertain if there was something illegal happening. If an off duty police officer heard somebody saying they were going to break into a house and commit theft, they've not broken the law but have expressed an intention to do so. They might have been joking after all.

My mum used to threaten a good hiding too, and she meant it. My stepdad would make similar threats but what he usually meant was a really hard blow to the head. My dad would threaten to "thrash" us, but he could never bring himself to lay a finger on us.

The policeman can't possibly have known what manner of threat it was - he would have had to rely on his gut instinct and indicators such as the woman's tone and the children's reaction

I think he did the right thing personally - I wish to hell SOMEBODY - a teacher, a social worker (my mother adopted disabled children, so there were plenty of social workiers in and out) had picked up on the problems we were having and done something - but nobody ever did

If she doesn't want to be on record as having threatened her children, she shouldn't have threatened them. It's spectacularly stupid in this day and age to threaten a "good hiding" in public, never mind "a good hiding like the one you had earlier". Not at all like threatening to eviscerate them or chuck them in a pond - those are obviously spoof threats and children react accordingly

I personally don't want a return to the days when parents could do whatever the hell they liked and nobody felt entitled to intervene. No thanks.

'my dad used to say things like that 'i'll give you a good hiding' etc. he is (and was) a big softy who let us get away with pretty much anything.'

What she actually said was 'i'll give you a good hiding like the one you had earlier'.

You surely have to admit that sounds pretty ominous?
Agree with others that the length of time between the incident and the reaction is daft. It should have been dealt with immediately.