Credit: Vanessa Brown & Adobe Stock
Mom Arrested After Confiscating Children’s iPads
A mom was arrested for confiscating iPads from her own children.
Vanessa Brown, a 50-year-old history teacher from Surrey, U.K., described the situation as ‘unspeakable devastation and trauma’ in an interview with LBC.
She was taken into police custody on March 26 and spent more than seven hours in a cell after being accused of stealing two iPads.
The devices had been located at her mother’s residence in Cobham.
In reality, the tablets belonged to her daughters, and Brown had temporarily confiscated them in an attempt to motivate the girls to concentrate on their school assignments – something Surrey Police has since acknowledged.
“I find it quite traumatic even talking about this now,” Brown said, reflecting on her experience.
“At no point did they [the officers] think to themselves, ‘Oh, this is a little bit of an overreaction…’ It was just a complete overreaction.”
She added that the officers’ behavior toward her elderly mother, who is in her 80s, was disrespectful, saying they ‘were speaking to my mother… like she was a criminal.’
The situation escalated when a man in his 40s reported the iPads stolen, prompting a welfare call from police.
Officers subsequently traced the devices to Brown’s mother’s home, where they arrested Brown, searched her, took her fingerprints, and held her in a Staines police cell.
As part of their investigation, police even visited the school attended by Brown’s children and removed her daughter from class for questioning.
The mom was eventually released on bail at around 12:30 a.m. – almost 12 hours after police first arrived at the property.
She later learned that her bail conditions included not contacting her children, meaning she would have been prevented from seeing them on Mother’s Day.
The incident has provoked criticism over how quickly police acted on the theft report and whether the force used its resources appropriately.
Brown voiced her concern, stating: “They were able to send a police car with police officers to my children’s school… All these police cars and police officers going into [an] address over a completely false report of a theft.”
Former Police and Crime Commissioner Anthony Stansfeld criticized the handling of the case.
He called it ‘incompetence and a certain amount of overzealousness,’ adding: “It was quite unnecessary to put a reputable fifty-year-old history teacher into a cell for seven hours.”
Surrey Police stated that officers responded to a reported theft and acted after a tracking signal located the iPads at the residence.
They later confirmed the devices did belong to Brown’s daughters and concluded that no crime had been committed.
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