We’ve just had a chat to Paul Savill, Safer neighbourhood Inspector on the Isle of Wight.
He confirmed that the police are here to make sure that there is no civil disorder.
He said there was no problem at all and that, “You can only describe today’s actions as peaceful.”
We asked them to clarify about the police and their possible use of riot police.
He confirmed that they did first go in, they did so with riot shields because they didn’t know what to expect.
He went to say, “As soon as it became obvious that there was no physical violence against us, the shields were put down and they haven’t been picked up since.”
Good natured
We said that in the chats that we’d had with people inside, they seemed pretty good natured and that they were keen to make it peaceful.
Inspector Savill agreed, “We’ve been able to speak to a spokesperson in there and all they want to do is to make their feeling known, as you can see from the banners.” He concluded, “I think the most important thing to them is to be heard.”
The Inspector also confirmed that the police wouldn’t be going in to forcible remove the people in the Vestas building.
A trespass has occurred
Inspector Savill said that the police were aware that not everyone inside the building was an employee or an ex-employee of Vestas – so trespass has occurred.
He also said that he’d been told by the managers of Vestas that they decided to close the site for safety reasons. This disruption could form part of an offense.
UPDATE
Interview
Have a listen to the interview with Paul Savill …
[audio:http://otw-audio.s3.amazonaws.com/paul-savill-vestas-sit-in.mp3]
