A mum claims she was arrested by police and held in a cell for more than seven hours for confiscating her children’s iPads.
Vanessa Brown, 50, was detained at Staines police station in Surrey, on March 26, after being accused of stealing two devices, it is alleged. But she reportedly said that she took the iPads from her kids so that they would concentrate on their homework and they were traced to the home of the grandmother of the children in Cobham, Surrey.
Officers from the Surrey force had taken her to the police station for questioning, where they also searched her, took fingerprints and custody photos. She was eventually allowed to leave and returned to her mother’s home 12 hours after the arrest.
The father of the children apparently reported the missing iPads to the police, reported LBC, and there are calls for the chief constable of Surrey Police to apologise over the incident.
But the history teacher has said she has been left traumatised by the whole experience. “I find it quite traumatic even talking about this now,” she reportedly said.
“At no point did they [the officers] think to themselves, ‘Oh, this is a little bit of an overreaction for a moment, confiscating temporarily her iPads and popping over to her mum’s to have a coffee’. It was just a complete overreaction. It was thoroughly unprofessional. They were speaking to my mother, who is in her 80s, like she was a criminal.”
It is also reported that officers went to her children’s school and took the kids out of classes and her bail conditions meant that she cannot speak to her children.
Former Police and Crime Commissioner Anthony Stansfield condemned Surrey Police for their handling of Ms Brown’s case and suggested that the force should apologise. “It seems to me incompetence and a certain amount of overzealousness at a junior level, which the local inspector should have put a rapid stop to,” Mr Stansfield said.
“It was quite unnecessary to put a reputable fifty-year-old history teacher into a cell for seven hours. It’s hardly likely that she would have absconded abroad and I would hope that the chief constable goes and apologises personally to the poor lady.”
Chief Superintendent Aimee Ramm at Surrey Police told The Mirror that the force had originally been alerted to a potential theft by a man in his 40s – before attending a property “where the occupant was questioned about the iPads and denied any knowledge of their whereabouts.”
She stated: “However, a tracking device on the iPads showed that they were at the address and a 50-year-old woman from Cobham was arrested on suspicion of theft. A search was then carried out using post-arrest powers and the iPads were located.”
And she continued: “The woman was subsequently released on conditional bail while further enquiries were carried out. The police bail conditions included not speaking to her daughters, who were connected to the investigation, while officers carried out their enquiries.
“Following these enquiries, officers discovered that the iPads belonged to the woman’s children and that she was entitled to confiscate items from her own children.”
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