Hertfordshire police admit unlawful arrest of couple in school WhatsApp row – report

A police force has reportedly admitted it unlawfully arrested two parents in front of their nine-year-old daughter after they complained about her school on WhatsApp. Rosalind Levine and her partner, Maxie Allen, said they were held at a police station for 11 hours over the complaints about their daughter’s primary school. The pair claimed they had been arrested and detained in January by six uniformed officers on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property. While Hertfordshire constabulary originally defended the arrest, it has now admitted it was unlawful and agreed a £20,000 payout, according to the Times. The force reportedly conceded the legal criteria for arrest was “not made out” and formally accepted liability for the wrongful detention. The couple said they had previously been banned from entering Cowley Hill primary school in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, after criticising its headteacher and leadership in 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 it claimed had become upsetting for staff, parents and governors. Hertfordshire police said in March that the arrests were necessary to fully investigate the allegations, as was “routine in these types of matters”. After investigating, the force said: “No further action should be taken due to insufficient evidence.” But the force’s lawyers admitted this month that the criteria for arrest, under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, were not met, “therefore rendering the arrest unlawful”, the Times reported. Hertfordshire police agreed a payout of £10,000 each to Allen, 50, and Levine, 47, sums the force considered “significantly above that required by the case law” and reflected its “desire to bring matters to a conclusion”. Allen, a Times Radio producer, had reportedly communicated to the school in May 2024 regarding the recruitment of a new headteacher but his queries were rejected. The school’s governors then wrote to the parent body about “inflammatory and defamatory” comments on social media, warning that the school would take action against anyone who caused “disharmony”. The Times said Allen and Levine communicated disbelief about the warnings on a private WhatsApp group, with the school subsequently banning them from entering its premises. After their ban, the pair said they emailed the school “regularly” about the needs of their daughter, who is disabled. An officer warned the family about the emails in December, telling them to remove the daughter from the school, which they did the following month, a week before the arrests, the Times reported. Allen claimed he and Levine were not abusive and were never told which communications were criminal, saying it was “completely Kafkaesque”. Levine told Sky News that the incident remained inexplicable to her. “We cannot fathom what happened; it doesn’t make any sense. We made a few inquiries, we had a bit of banter on a WhatsApp group, and then we were arrested,” she said. Hertfordshire police told the Times: “There are no issues of misconduct involving any officer in relation to this matter.” But the force added: “The legal test around necessity of arrest was not met in this instance.”