LONDON: Scotland Yard has pledged to do everything in its power to stop a repeat of the large-scale disruption caused by Extinction Rebellion in London earlier this year.
Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said the group’s tactics — which included climate change activists blocking roads and chaining themselves to buildings and trains in a deliberate bid to be arrested — have changed the protesting landscape. Other groups, including the so-called yellow vests, have adopted similar methods of civil disobedience after parts of the capital were brought to a standstill in April, he said.
This week has seen Extinction Rebellion protests on a far smaller scale across several cities in the UK, with seven people arrested and charged with aggravated trespass following demonstrations at construction sites in east London on Tuesday. Another mass demonstration is planned for October 7, when police resources are likely to be stretched, with separate protests expected in the run-up to the Halloween deadline for Britain to leave the EU.
Taylor said the Met plan to take a tough approach to prevent a repeat of the scenes across the capital in April, which cost the force around £16 million. “We thought that April was wholly unacceptable. It went well beyond the realms of what was reasonable, and we would not tolerate that level of disruption again,” he said at a briefing on Thursday.
“We have been quite clear with the protest group. The impact of that behaviour, the impact across London and the risks to other Londoners that it creates because our policing resources are abstracted elsewhere...Absolutely I can assure Londoners we will do everything we can to avoid that situation again.
“We know there will be a protest around that time, we know that it could potentially attract a lot of people. We will balance that to the best of our ability to minimise that disruption as much as we can and recognise protest groups’ fundamental right, which is enshrined in law, to protest.”
On Monday, around 200 activists shut down a busy road in central London as they demonstrated outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
Taylor said he could not guarantee that police can prevent similar disruption at future protests. “I’m not going to sit here and say there are going to be no roads blocked, I can’t promise that,” he said. “We will do everything we can to try to avoid that. That includes engaging with protest groups, it will include putting conditions on where appropriate, it will include making sure we’ve got the appropriate planning and resources in place to deal with obstructions should they take place.”
More than 1,150 protesters were arrested over the April demonstrations, with around 180 of them charged so far. But Taylor, who has previously said he wants the Met to push for every one of those arrested to be charged, spoke of his frustration at the sentences they will receive.
He said: “I would like to see where behaviour crosses those threshold of criminality, where we have to react and use powers to deal with it, that the type of sentencing you might receive would, as with other offences, act as a deterrent for that behaviour.” The senior officer suggested that the cumulative effect of lengthy periods of disruption could be viewed as an aggravating feature to the offence.