I agree with most of what you say, wysiwyg and Cat.

One thing that really bothered me about this is that from the reports, the guy arrived with his child, asked to use the swing, was told by the mum that they would be done in 5 minutes (whether that meant a literal 5 minutes or "soonish" who knows) and the guy then stepped in, to physically stop the swing and remove the child, despite the fact that the mum was RIGHT THERE and had said "no, wait".

In that instance, I suspect I would (unless actually fearful of harm) stand my ground and say no, back off, you can wait.

There have been plenty of times (particularly with the swing!) (or standing obstructionistically in front of the slide, as per wysiwyg's note!) where I've seen other children hedging around, waiting patiently (or impatiently) and I've said to my child "dude - someone else's turn, time to play on something else".

But I wouldn't want to be teaching my child that if you have said no, then if someone else gets in your face (or swing) about it, then you back off. I don't think that's necessarily what you were saying wysiwyg, and you're clearly not condoning the behaviour, I'm just still thinking this though.

Completely at the other end of the scale from this guy though, I had a situation just the other day when someone came up wanting the swing, and (because we had been there for quite a while) I said to DS1 that we'd get off and let someone else have a go, and the dad said, "No, he needs to learn to wait his turn, please don't get off for us yet." and so we had a bit more of a swing first!

So yeah ... But I keep on coming back to this question about whether the call to the police was an overreaction ... and wondering were there other people around?

If that happened and I was there, would I have gone and stood up for her? If that had happened, would she have felt safe, and not needed to call the police?

Because while I am not immediately in a "danger" mentality if someone went and touched my child, if I have expressly and reasonably said "five more minutes" it would be completely in the "not ok, possible danger" zone if the other adult then physically stopped my child, etc.

In the same way as if I was on the train and someone asked me to move, I say no, and then they push me or move my bag, or something. That would immediately be a step away from "odd" and raising a red flag, whether it's "no boundaries, not appropriate - watch out" or "bully" or "intimidation and force - DANGER".

And if there was no one there I could reach out to for help, would the police be the appropriate course of action?

Some people seem to be dealing with this as if the call to the police was akin to calling in a SWAT team because the neighbours' music is a bit loud (overreaction, entitlement, precious, etc) or from a place of "take that - I'm telling the teacher" (juvenile, waste of resources, petty) but if it was because they were scared (whether that's reasonable or not) then was the police appropriate? Would it make a difference if they'd asked someone there to help first?

And if there were people first who didn't come to intervene / help, is that because they didn't notice, or didn't think there was anything wrong about the behaviour, or they just didn't want to get involved?

Questions ...