London police were too slow to make arrests during the Palestinian protests that followed last year's October 7 terror attack on Israel and will now act more quickly, a senior police officer has said.
Matt Twist, the Metropolitan police's deputy commissioner in charge of public safety, told think tank Policy Exchange that officers had reacted too slowly to confront militants at Palestinian protests, and claimed they were now acting much more quickly. As has been previously reported at length, the Metropolitan police's stance appears to have been to allow these protests to continue undisturbed and wait for everyone to disperse before attempting to make specific arrests.
For example, some have used the protests to call for “jihad” (holy war) or glorify terrorism and genocide. Twist argued that this was changing. Report According to Policy Exchange:
A look back at the crackdown on protests over the past eight months shows that not everything was going well, especially in the early stages in October.
Since then, we have evolved our tactics to act more quickly and decisively. Sometimes, we were unable to move quickly to make an arrest – for example, in the case of the man who was yelling “Jihad” – and we took quick advice from lawyers and Child Protective Services before making the decision.
Our focus now is on identifying legitimate grounds for arrest, acting where necessary and then investigating, so arrests are much more likely to be made more quickly in these circumstances.
In an interview with the group in May, a senior police officer said that while police had used the 1986 Policing Act more frequently than at any time since it was enacted under Thatcher to impose conditions on Palestine Solidarity protests, it still “represents a very real policing challenge and its cumulative effect is certainly causing significant concern within London's Jewish community.”
Twist's comments in May seemed to presage a few weeks of a broader national debate that emerged from a summer of protests against child stabbings and mass immigration, in which “two-tier policing” became a hot topic. Critics cited a stark contrast between the police's velvet-glove response during pro-Gaza demonstrations and their iron-fisted response to right-wing protesters, leading to accusations that police are not afraid to strike swiftly when confronting white communities.
Twist stated the police's official position on these issues: “In policing, we are neutral towards the cause being protested. We determine policing tactics based on the threat, harm and risk, based on the information and intelligence available to us. In that sense, there is no such thing as 'two-tier policing' or 'differential policing'. In fact, there are infinite tiers of policing depending on the threat, harm and risk.”
The report criticised police for describing the Palestinian protests in London as “peaceful”, a term the definition of which is unfamiliar to the majority of the public.
Calls for “jihad” and a “globalization of the intifada” have been made, and anti-Semitic placards have been seen at countless protests. 415 people were arrested between October 2023 and April 2024. Fifteen were arrested for terrorism offences, which the Metropolitan police described as “unprecedented”, with the majority for “suspicion of supporting a banned organisation, namely Hamas”. In at least one incident, members of a large breakaway group fired fireworks at police officers.
The report concluded that police were reluctant to arrest protesters for several reasons, including resource shortages (it takes 30 officers to intercept even one rioter from a peaceful crowd, risking injury to the target, bystanders and the officers themselves), but also the risk of retaliation for officers involved.
…As a result of an accountability system that the Metropolitan police commissioner has described as “slow, unfair and inefficient”, officers are increasingly fearful of being subject to lengthy complaint investigations, independent investigations and, potentially, prosecutions.
Sir Mark Rowley said aggressive policing, as measured by the use of stop and search, “leaves officers fearing that acting with the best of intentions could have their lives turned upside down for years”, and the number of stop and search incidents “has halved from around 20,000 in January 2022 to just over 9,000 in December 2023”, likely because officers are reluctant to use their powers for fear of the potential repercussions.
The report recommended more effective policing in the future, saying police should “take all possible steps” to make arrests during protests, rather than filing complaints and seeking arrests days later. It also said police chiefs should be required by law, not just as a business decision, to protect critical national infrastructure from protests, and that police should be required to make public records of all discussions they have with protest organizers before a demonstration takes place.
