'ABSURD' POLICE ARREST MOTHER WHO TOOK AWAY KIDS' IPADS

History teacher is accused of stealing and held in cell for nearly eight hours

- Martyn Brown and Steph Spyro

POLICE were branded “absurd” when a mum was held in a cell for nearly eight hours after she confiscated her two children’s iPads.

Officers arrested Vanessa Brown and accused her of stealing the devices.

But the history teacher says she took the tablets to encourage her kids to focus on school work as she went to her mother’s for a coffee.

Police tracked the iPads to the home of the girls’ grandmother, in her 80s, after being alerted to a potential theft.

They hauled in Ms Brown, 50, from Cobham, Surrey, for questioning before searching her, as well as taking her fingerprints and custody mugshots.

Tory MP Neil O'Brien said yesterday: "This is beyond absurd." "People are having phones snatched all the time and police won't follow up even when they know where they are, yet a lawabiding person can end up in a cell for hours on end for taking away their own kids' iPads." The criticism was echoed by fellow Tory MP Anthony Stansfeld, below, former police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley.

He called on the Surrey force to apologise, saying: "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 50-year-old reputable history teacher into a cell for seven hours.