It’s a bold move to blame the people you arrest for being arrested, well simultaneously saying that arresting these individuals is a waste of resources. Ok then, so prioritise, is it more important to go after the violent criminals or the non-violent criminals?

You don’t even have to have a conversation about whether or not they are in fact terrorists, you can completely absolve yourself of any responsibility and still be able to come up with a reason not to waste resources arresting people.

There is any number of ways these officers could have got out of doing this, they wanted to.