Eco-zealots have cost police more than £7.7m since April
Just Stop Oil’s £15million bill: Eco-zealots have cost police more than £7.7m since April, Met reveals – after the group’s winter 2022 campaign cost the force £7.5m
Just Stop Oil’s 13-week campaign of disruption in London has cost the Met Police £7.7million – equivalent to 23,500 officer shifts.
The force has had to police 515 protests carried out by JSO since April, with action including slow marches in major roads in London and disruption of high-profile sporting events. More than 270 people have been arrested.
The enormous bill is on top of the £7.5m spent by the force policing protest action by JSO between October and December last year, bringing the total bill to more than £15m.
Speaking today on LBC, which revealed the figures in a Freedom of Information Request, Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said: ‘The Met is a resilient organisation, we’re a large organisation and we’re used to policing protests, but this is quite a chronic thing.
‘In terms of every single day, we’ve got over 150 officers who ordinarily would be policing in local communities, who are policing in and around other parts of London.
Just Stop Oil activists during a road blocking protest on London Bridge last month
Activists are spoken to by police during a protest by the eco group in the West End
‘And one of the challenges we have with Just Stop Oil is they don’t tell us where they’re going to protest, they don’t tell us when they’re going to take this action, they don’t engage, which means that we have to put more officers on it than we otherwise would do.’
As well as marching in main roads, Just Stop Oil activists have disrupted events including The Open, Wimbledon, the Ashes, the Gallagher Premiership rugby final at Twickenham and the World Snooker Championship.
They also took action at Chelsea Flower Show and the London Pride March, disrupted filming of the Channel 4 show The Last Leg, and sprayed orange paint on the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero building in central London.
Earlier this week the eco mob were seen getting a taste of their own medicine when their ‘Beyond F***ed Banquet’ was derailed by counter-protestors who set off alarms suspended in balloons.
Just Stop Oil protester Daniel Knorr is carried off the pitch at Lords by Johnny Bairstow on June 28
The divisive climate activism group held an event in London to ‘step back, grieve for what will die and disappear but also to celebrate what we have achieved’, offering campaign updates, stories from people ‘in resistance’, plant based food and music.
But the banquet was thrown off course when ‘Just Stop P***ing Everyone Off’ protestors crashed the event with deafening ‘personal safety alarms’.
The group – which this week clashed with JSO as they prepared to march on London – was revealed to be led by YouTubers Josh Pieters and Archie Manners.
They shared today how they had send a mole ‘undercover […] for the past few weeks’ to ‘help stop Just Stop Oil’ as public opposition to the group mounts.
Archie told MailOnline: ‘Climate Change is the greatest crisis facing our generation – but if we’re going to solve it we need to work together.
The eco mob also targeted Wimbledon by invading courts and carpeting them with confetti
‘JSO’s tactics over the last 18 months haven’t worked; indeed people across the country are put off this vital cause as a result of their protesting.
‘The people at JSO are well-intended; but they’re going about it the wrong way. Stopping mothers getting to hospital, or ruining people’s day out at the snooker isn’t doing anything to tackle climate change.’
Reacting to the figures showing the financial cost of their protests, a Just Stop Oil spokesperson said today: ‘Matt Twist has laid out the consequences of the Policing Act for all to see: legitimate protest is now classed as crime.
‘This oil funded regime has us locked on for annihilation and will lock up anyone who dissents. But we will not die quietly. We will continue to resist until the government agrees to end new oil and gas.’