Hertfordshire Police officers 'lacked understanding' of the media's role before arresting journalists at M25 Just Stop Oil protest, according to an independent review. And according to the report, two police officers involved in arresting the journalists had not completed their mandatory media training.
Hertfordshire Constabulary’s chief constable Charlie Hall has received the review by an independent force into the arrests of journalists near the M25 motorway on Monday, November 7 and Tuesday, November 8.
Chief Superintendent Jon Hutchinson, of Cambridgeshire Constabulary, carried out the review which found that a total four members of the press were arrested – with one spending 877 minutes (14 hours, 37 minutes) in custody, Herts Live has reported.
The report reads: “Police powers were not used appropriately. When considering the rights, duties and responsibilities connected to the function of journalism, it is important to note the judgement resulting from Gsell v Switzerland. There is evidence to suggest the potential for the arrests to amount to an ‘unlawful interference’ with the individual’s freedom of expression under Article 10.”
Gsell v Switzerland was a European Court of Human Rights case after a journalist was refused access to bars and restaurants in Davos, where protests against a World Economic Forum meeting was taking place in 2009. The ruling requires police forces to make “precise” case-by-case decisions when they refuse journalists access to protests.
The report added: “The review team believed that the Bronze Plan almost exclusively endorsed arrest as the only intervention available to them. This approach did not differentiate between people and did not consider the balance of rights (no distinction on activity).”
The report makes five recommendations to Hertfordshire Constabulary. These are that Hertfordshire Constabulaty should consider selecting commanders with “commensurate skills and experience, that the force should mentors “collate with commanders” during operations, that all commpanders have access to Public Order Safety advisors, that commanders should have the “ability and capacity to maintain accurate decision logs”, and that all officers complete media training.
The media training is supplied through a package by a journalists’ trade union – the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). Responding to the report, chief constable Charlie Hall said: “I fully appreciate the legitimate concerns raised by the arrests of the journalists, which was why I commissioned the review.
"I also rang and apologised to the accredited journalists who we arrested on November 11. Whilst the review has correctly concluded that the arrests of the journalists were not justified, and that changes in training and command need to be made, it found no evidence to indicate that officers acted maliciously or were deliberately disproportionate
"They made mistakes and I now reiterate my apologies. The review also affords some valuable learning, which we are acting on immediately, so that it can be used when policing future protests, and we will also be sharing the learning nationally.”
