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The woman recalled taking away her daughters’ iPads to help them stay focused on their studies and avoid distractions.
Vanessa Brown had kept the iPads at her mother’s house in Cobham, Surrey. (Representative Image)
A woman in the UK was arrested and barred from seeing her daughters after she took away their iPads to help them focus on school. The incident happened on March 26 when Vanessa Brown, a 50-year-old history teacher, spent more than seven hours in a police cell after being accused of stealing the devices, The Guardian reported.
She told LBC that she had only taken the iPads from her children and kept them at her mother’s house in Cobham, Surrey, to stop them from getting distracted from their studies. But things took an unexpected turn when police showed up at her mother’s home and tracked the devices there.
“I find it quite traumatic even talking about this now,” Brown said.
According to Surrey Police, they had gone to the Cobham address after receiving a call about a “concern for safety.” A man in his 40s had reported the iPads as stolen. The police said when they reached Brown’s mother’s house, Brown denied knowing where the devices were.
“Officers encouraged the woman to return the items and resolve the matter, however, the woman did not cooperate and therefore she was arrested on suspicion of theft. A search was then carried out using post-arrest powers and the iPads were located,” Ch Supt Aimee Ramm, Surrey police’s northern divisional commander said.
Brown described the entire experience as deeply upsetting, saying, “At no point did (the officers) think to themselves, ‘Oh, this is a little bit of an overreaction for a moment, confiscating temporarily her (own) iPads and popping over to her mum’s to have a coffee’. It was just a complete overreaction.”
She also shared how officers treated her elderly mother during the search. “It was thoroughly unprofessional. They were speaking to my mother, who is in her 80s, like she was a criminal,” Brown said.
After being arrested, Brown was taken to Staines police station where she was searched and had fingerprints and custody shots taken. She spent several hours in a cell and was not allowed to return to her mother’s house until nearly 12 hours later. She said the ordeal left her in a “catatonic state.”
Brown was also not allowed to speak to her daughters while she was on bail. She said the police even went to her children’s school and pulled one of them out of class as part of the investigation.
“They were able to send a police car with police officers to my children’s school, they were able to send another police car or two to arrest me … I know people are making reports of thefts, of assaults and very violent crimes in and around our neighbourhood – and they’re not getting a response for days,” she said.
“I cannot get to the bottom of why (my arrest) was done in such a quick turnaround – maybe less than an hour. All these police cars and police officers going into address over a completely false report of a theft,” she added.
Former Police and Crime Commissioner Anthony Stansfeld criticised Surrey Police for how they handled the case.
“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. 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,” the commissioner said.
Surrey Police later confirmed that the iPads did belong to Brown’s children and she was entitled to take them away. As per The Guardian, the case was closed the next day and all bail conditions were removed.
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