20 more people arrested after oil terminal protests in Grays
Just Stop Oil campaigners have been calling on the government to abandon its commitment to fossil fuels
20 more people have been arrested in connection with environmental protests targeting oil depots in Essex.
Just Stop Oil campaigners have been calling on the government to abandon its commitment to fossil fuels and have been attempting to block access to fuel facilities in the county for the past several days.
A group of 17 people were arrested at around 4:50pm yesterday (April 4) at the junction of Stoneness Road and London Road on suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal damage.
A further three arrests were made after vehicles were stopped in Grays later than night.
A total of 192 arrests have been made in connection with the demonstrations, with 24 people being arrested multiple times.
Police say all but one of the sites targeted by protestors are operating as normal.
Essex Police Assistant Chief Constable Rachel Nolan said:
“Our response to these protests have now entered the fifth day. Thankfully, we have been able to keep the disruption caused to the affected businesses to a minimum and all but one are now reporting business as usual.
“There is a small number of people who continue to protest, and we are working to resolve this as quickly and – most importantly – as safely as possible.
“We are continuing to work alongside our key partners on this issue and our priority has always been to bring this incident to a safe conclusion and to bring the areas affected back to normality as quickly as possible.
“A large element of that is our proactive response, which again has yielded results in the last 24 hours, with 20 arrests made.
“As a result, no new protests have been reported on any sites in the area.
“I want to again emphasise that policing is not anti-protest; we will always endeavour to facilitate protest where we can.