A police chief has defended arresting two parents in a school dispute but said a lower key approach might have been better than sending three police cars, a van and six uniformed officers to their door.
Maxie Allen and his partner Rosalind Levine were arrested in front of their daughter on 29 January.
Hertfordshire’s chief constable Andy Prophet has defended the force’s actions saying that the couple had been sent warnings and there was ‘lawful reason to arrest’.
Six police officers were sent to the family’s house to arrest the couple on suspicion of malicious communications and harassment after Cowley Hill Primary School, where their daughter attended, complained of a high volume of emails and disparaging comments on WhatsApp.
Prophet said: “I’ve looked at the footage, I understand why a member of the public would look at that and think that feels a bit over the top. With the benefit of hindsight I think we could have done that and should have done that differently. We may have needed six people but they didn’t all need to be uniformed officers.
“We didn’t need to have three marked vehicles and a police van parked outside. We probably could have achieved it with one or two uniformed officers and if we needed some people to go in and support, we could have thought about officers in plain clothes and dealing with it a little bit lower key.”
Speaking on a force webcast, Prophet defended the actions of the inspector who approved the arrests, saying he did so because he did not believe Allen and Levine would consent to a voluntary interview and because of the need to preserve electronic devices.
The parents said they were locked inside a cell for eleven hours, after complaining about the recruitment process at their daughter’s school on a WhatsApp group.
They told the Times that police took their fingerprints and searched them, then left them in the cell. Five weeks after their arrest, police decided they would take no further action.
The couple said they had previously been banned from entering Cowley Hill Primary School, in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, after questioning the recruitment process for a head teacher and criticising the leadership in a parents' WhatsApp group.
Because of this, they said they weren’t allowed to attend their daughter Sascha’s parents evening and her Christmas performance.
They also said the ban prevented them from giving the school important medical information about their daughter, who is disabled, neurodivergent and suffers from epilepsy.
Police had voiced their concerns about the parents sending multiple emails, and criticising the school on a parents’ WhatsApp group.
The school said it had "sought advice from police" after a "high volume of direct correspondence and public social media posts" that they claim had become upsetting for staff, parents and governors.
Hertfordshire Constabulary said the arrests were "necessary to fully investigate the allegations", and later concluded that no further action would be taken.
Mr Allen, a Times Radio producer, said he was attending a Zoom meeting when six police officers turned up at his home.
He told The Times: "I was just in complete disbelief.
"It was just unfathomable to me that things had escalated to this degree."
The couple asked to be told what they had done that met the threshold for the alleged offences, but both the police and school refused to give specifics, the paper said.
Mr Allen had reportedly written to the school in May 2024 over the recruitment process for a new head teacher but his questions were rebuffed.
Shortly afterwards, the chair of governors is said to have written to the parent body about "inflammatory and defamatory" comments on social media, warning that the school would take action against anyone who caused "disharmony".
According to the newspaper, the couple expressed incredulity about the warnings on a private WhatsApp group.
The couple say they were later banned from entering the school premises, and say they emailed the school "regularly" following the ban to address issues relating to the needs of their daughter Sascha.
They say they could find about 45 email threads, some involving multiple emails, during their six-month ban.
An officer issued a warning to the family in December, and told them to take Sascha out of school, which they did the next month, a week before they were arrested.
Mr Allen said: "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."
He added: "I believe the school tried to use the police to close down legitimate inquiries, and for some reason the constabulary played along."
A spokesperson for Cowley Hill Primary School told The Times: "We sought advice from the police following a high volume of direct correspondence and public social media posts from two parents, as this was becoming upsetting for staff, parents and governors.
"We're always happy for parents to raise concerns, but we do ask that they do this in a suitable way, and in line with the school's published complaints procedure."
Hertfordshire Constabulary said: "Following reports of harassment and malicious communications, which are criminal offences, a man and a woman from Borehamwood, both aged in their 40s, were arrested on Wednesday 29 January.
"The arrests were necessary to fully investigate the allegations as is routine in these types of matters.
"Following further investigations, officers deemed that no further action should be taken due to insufficient evidence.
"In relation to the police visit on 20 December, a complaint was submitted which was reviewed by our Professional Standards Department.
"It was deemed that the service provided by officers was appropriate."
