Police Visit Dad Who Joked on Facebook About Feeding Hot Sauce to Newborn

TGI Fridays restaurant in Stockton. Screenshot/Googlemaps

A new father received a police visit over lighthearted comments he made on Facebook about accidentally feeding his 5-day-old baby hot sauce.

Two police officers knocked on the door of Paul Dawson’s house in Stockton in the north of England, on Jan. 8. after they received a phone call about the welfare of his baby.

Dawson had posted a Facebook update two days earlier joking about how he accidentally got traces of hot sauce in his son’s mouth at a restaurant.

“Apparently five-day-old babies don’t like it when their dads put their fingers in their mouths after eating hot wings,” he had written in the post, as reported by local media Teeside Live. “Unintentionally by the way. Lol.”

That was enough to raise the suspicions of an anonymous member of the public, who contacted the local Cleveland police force.

The police took action, but according to Dawson, hadn’t actually read the Facebook post before heading over to his house and knocking on the door two days later.

“I opened the door and asked what was up,” said Dawson, according to Teeside Live.

“They replied, ‘You don’t know then?’ and I said I didn’t have a clue.

“That’s when they told me that I had apparently been feeding my son hot sauce.

“I just said, ‘Are you taking the [expletive], mate?’”

Dawson, who owns a local  barber shop, was so incensed and upset that he took himself off, leaving his girlfriend to talk with the officers.

“I was actually quite tearful that someone had called the police,” Dawson added. “My girlfriend then asked the officers if they'd even read the Facebook post. They hadn’t, so they were shown it and they just looked embarrassed. I can’t believe, with our stretched police force, they were sent out without looking into it properly.”

Their son, Ben, was born on New Year’s Day morning.  The couple had gone out for a meal in a local TGI Fridays restaurant five days after he had been born.

Dawson had been eating hot wings before he put his knuckle in his newborn’s mouth to pacify him.

He had earlier wiped his hands on his napkin, but Dawson realised the baby must have tasted the traces of hot sauce when he saw the newborn respond.

“Ben made a funny face and that was that,” Dawson said.

A Cleveland Police representative said via email: “Police received a call from a member of the public regarding concern for the welfare of a baby on Tuesday 8^th January.”

“As a result, two officers were deployed to an address in Stockton to speak with the parents of the baby to understand the circumstances of the report.

“Officers were satisfied that the baby was safe and well and there were no further enquiries carried out.”

The original Facebook post has disappeared from Dawson’s feed, but he has put up several hot sauced-themed images, including a photoshopped photograph of their new-born, clutching a bottle of Tabasco and a chilli pepper in his hospital bed.

Another photograph is of a tiny baby’s bib embroidered with the image of a chilli pepper, carrying the words “it’s a little chilli.”