Met admits mistakes at pro-palestinian protests
A SENIOR Scotland Yard officer has admitted the police made mistakes over their handling of pro-palestinian protests.
Matt Twist, the assistant commissioner of the Met police responsible for public order policing, said the force “didn’t get everything right - particularly in the early stages in October.”
In an interview with the think tank Policy Exchange for a report on the protests published today, Mr Twist cited the decision not to immediately arrest demonstrators shouting “jihad.”
“On occasion we did not move quickly to make arrests, for example the man chanting for ‘Jihad’ which was a decision made following fast time advice from lawyers and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS),” he said.
However, Mr Twist said the police had developed their tactics since then to be faster and more decisive.
“We are now much more focussed on identifying reasonable grounds for arrest, acting where needed, and then investigating, so in these circumstances it’s very likely arrests would be made more quickly now,” he said.
He rejected accusations of “two-tier or differential policing” in how the Met handled the pro-palestine protests, claiming instead they had an “infinite number of tiers of policing”.
“In public order policing we are neutral as to the cause that is being protested. We base policing tactics on the threat, harm and risk based on the information and intelligence available to us,” he said.
“In that sense there is no such thing as ‘two-tier or differential policing’ there are in fact an infinite number of tiers of policing, depending on the threat, harm and risk,” he said.
The Policy Exchange report, published ahead of a Government review of policing protests, also revealed that town and city centres targeted for protests had effectively become “no-go” zones for many people.
The report said that too often the police, prosecutors, the Government and the courts had wrongly failed to prioritise the rights of ordinary people.