A couple who’d had a little too much to think were detained in front of their nine year-old daughter and kept in a cell for eight hours over “disparaging” messages in a school WhatsApp and follow-up emails raising concerns with school leadership.
Six uniformed officers from Hertfordshire Police were sent to arrest Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine after their child’s school objected to a series of emails and “disparaging” comments in a parents’ WhatsApp group.
They had questioned the recruitment process for a new headteacher and were accused of “casting aspersions” on the chair of governors, which the school claimed had become “upsetting” for staff, parents, and governors.
The couple were detained in front of their nine-year-old daughter, fingerprinted, searched, and held in police cells for eight hours.
They were then questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications, and causing a nuisance on school property.
After a five-week investigation, police concluded there was insufficient evidence and took no further action – though by then, the knock at the door, the squad cars, and the spectacle of arrest by half a dozen officers would already have done the damage in the eyes of their local community.
The Times has more:
The couple had previously been banned from entering Cowley Hill Primary School, in Borehamwood, after questioning the appointment process for a head and “casting aspersions” on the chair of governors on WhatsApp.
They say they were blocked from attending the parents’ evening for their daughter Sascha, nine, and were not allowed to be in the audience for her Christmas performance. Crucially, even though Sascha suffers from epilepsy and is neurodivergent and registered disabled, the couple were unable to meet teachers to inform them how to administer medication and ask questions about her learning progress.
Allen, a producer at Times Radio, told The Times that their treatment showed “massive overreach” by Hertfordshire police, as well as a sinister approach by Cowley Hill primary to “silence awkward parents”.
He added: “It was absolutely nightmarish. I couldn’t believe this was happening, that a public authority could use the police to close down a legitimate inquiry.
“We’d never used abusive or threatening language, even in private, and always followed due process. Yet we have never even been told what these communications were that were supposedly criminal, which is completely Kafkaesque.”
Cowley Hill primary said it had sought advice from police after a “high volume of direct correspondence and public social media posts” that had become upsetting for staff, parents and governors.
Levine, 46, was clearing out toys for charity and looking after her three-year-old daughter, Francesca, on January 29 when there was a knock at the front door of their home in Borehamwood.
“I saw six police officers standing there. There were two cars and a police van. My first thought was that Sascha was dead. I could not think of any other reason why six police officers would be at my door.
“My heart was thumping, thinking something terrible had happened. So when I was placed under arrest, in a weird way I was briefly relieved. And then I started to think, ‘what on earth? What the hell is going on?’ Francesca was cowering in the corner, she was terrified.”
As officers searched the house, Levine, a television producer, called her 80-year-old mother to come over and look after the children. Levine said she had begged police not to put her in handcuffs in front of her toddler, adding: “There was a female officer — she agreed not to use cuffs but said she’d be staying right beside me in case. Then I’m chucked in a cell all day long.”
The couple spent the next 11 hours at Stevenage police station where they were interviewed under caution before being released at about midnight. They grappled to understand how a relatively trivial dispute had escalated so severely.
The Times asked the school, council and police for information about the quantity of emails and for examples of what constituted malicious communications. All three declined to give details. Allen and Levine said they could find about 45 email threads, some involving multiple emails because of replies, during their six-month ban on entering the school premises.
The couple asked to be told what they had done that met the threshold for the offences, but both the police and school refused to give details. They said the nuisance allegations were never properly explained.
“That’s what makes it more dystopian,” Allen said. “At no point were we given a smoking gun – the email or comment that formed the basis of this. The reason they haven’t given it is because it doesn’t exist.”
This is where perception-based policing leads: lawful speech chilled, ‘upset’ weaponised, and moral red lines drawn by the easily offended. Worth reading in full.
