Call for fast arrest of Just Stop Oil activists

BRITAIN’S second most senior police officer has said police should be arresting Just Stop Oil protesters “within seconds or minutes”.

Stephen Watson, chief constable at Greater Manchester Police, said criticism of officers by the public for being too slow to clear the protesters was “not an unreasonable judgment”.

“The public has seen us reacting too slowly, less assertively than they would have liked. They have seen the facilitation of the rights of the minority to come at the expense of the vast majority,” he told The Daily Telegraph in an interview. “That is not an unreasonable judgment.”

This was because officers spent too much time building a “copper-bottomed” case for prosecuting them for offences such as public nuisance rather than simply arresting them for the lesser crime of obstruction.

“If people obstruct the highway, they should be moved from the highway very quickly. The so-called five-stage process of resolution can be worked through in a matter of seconds and minutes,” he said.

His comments came as protesters from Just Stop Oil caused more misery for drivers stuck in snow chaos yesterday as they blocked a road in south London with yet another slow march.

Police officers told a driver who called on them to stop Just Stop Oil protesters from blocking the road that “our hands are tied”.

The Government is proposing to close loopholes that have been exploited by Just Stop Oil and other ecoactivists by defining in law the level of disruption at which police can intervene and arrest protesters.

Ministers are expected to introduce secondary legislation in Parliament that will set out a statutory definition of “serious disruption”, which could allow police to crack down on “slow walk” tactics by treating them as the culmination of a series of unlawful protests.