TWO parents who were arrested over messages in a school WhatsApp group have said they do not expect an apology from the police for their wrongful arrest.

Speaking on GB News Maxie Allen said: “What happened in the end is that the police have admitted the liability for unlawful arrests and paid us damages and paid our costs. What they haven’t done, of course, is given an apology but I suppose ‘sorry’ is not a word in the police vocabulary.

“I never thought they would say sorry. I think they’ve got a bit too much pride for that, so we were never going to get that word. But realistically, at the first opportunity, really, they have thrown in the towel.

“This was never about money, this was about the liability. But realistically, the damages, the costs and that admission, I think that says sorry louder than the five actual letters would have done.

“If you add up the cost of it, not only our damages and legal costs, but their own lawyers’ costs, the cost of the investigation, the cost of six police officers, the time the police must have spent on this case is absolutely mind boggling.

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“And why they did it, why they made that decision to arrest us? We’re never going to know the answer to that; it is going to remain a mystery.

“You do have to ask yourself how a state primary school got itself involved in a wrongful arrest case, and that must be a first. I mean, how on earth did that happen?

“It’s very difficult to know with cases such as ours whether it is the police acting far too heavy handedly, or whether the original complaints are unrealistic. I do kind of wonder, it’s easy to blame the police for these stories, and the police do have some culpability with our case.

“But there is a bit of a kind of Amazon or Uber Eats culture with the police. You want something, you press a button. You want a take away? You press a button on your phone. You want someone to shut up? You call the police.

“And I think it’s kind of almost down to all of us as citizens to be judicious and sparing and only get the police involved as an absolute last resort if there really is something terrible going on, not to use the police as a weapon and not to use them as a fishing exercise.”

The child’s mother Rosalind Levine said: “We’re just like any other parents of a child who has special educational needs; you fight for your child.

“They had told us at one point to remove her from the school, that was the police had told us that, not that it had anything to do with them where our child goes to school. But none of it really made any sense to us.

“I think what gets forgotten here is that at the centre of all of this was a nine-year-old child who was vulnerable. It impacted her; when we were banned from the school, that really impacted her, because it meant that her parents couldn’t take her into school or pick her up or go to a Christmas show or go to parents’ evening. So she was impacted that way.

“And then on the day we were arrested, I didn’t show up to pick her up from school. It was her third day in a new school, and I wasn’t there, and a neighbour had to show up to pick her up.

“We eventually had to explain everything to her and it was really upsetting. The whole thing has been incredibly upsetting for her, and we’ve explained things the best that we can to her and reassured her that the police don’t always get it wrong, they just did in our case, and the police are there to help you.

“She’s okay. It’s impacted the both of them, but I’m hoping that hopefully we can put it behind us and move forward.”