Two parents who were arrested after they complained about their daughter’s primary school on WhatsApp have said they felt “vindicated” by the police admitting the arrest was unlawful.
Rosalind Levine and her partner, Maxie Allen, said they were held at a police station for 11 hours over their complaints about the school.
The pair told the Guardian 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, the pair said the force had now admitted it was unlawful and agreed a £20,000 payout.
Allen, a Times Radio producer, said: “We do feel vindicated. We are pleased that they recognised this was a pretty serious mistake.”
He added that the incident had impacted “quite a few people”, including another of their children who was there when the pair were arrested.
“Our three-year-old watched her mum being led away by uniformed police officers,” Allen said.
Levine said: “When you’re arrested it’s a really horrible experience.
“You lose your liberty, you lose your freedom. I couldn’t walk into the next room of my house without asking permission from a complete stranger who was in my house.”
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 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”.
A Hertfordshire police spokesperson said: “Whilst there are no issues of misconduct involving any officer in relation to this matter, Hertfordshire Constabulary has accepted liability solely on the basis that the legal test around necessity of arrest was not met in this instance.
“Therefore Mr Haddow-Allen and Ms Levine were wrongfully arrested and detained in January 2025. It would be inappropriate to make further comment at this stage.”
Levine said she was glad the force had acknowledged the arrest was unlawful, but she was “concerned about how many other people this is possibly happening to” whose stories go untold.
“There does need to be change. Every police force needs to look at their actions, look at their decisions, and make sure that they really are doing the right thing,” she said.
