Police FINALLY send protesting eco zealots scattering

Hallelujah! Police FINALLY send protesting eco zealots scattering amid threats of arrest

• Officers can intervene if protestors deemed to be causing ‘serious disruption’ 
• Footage showed officer telling activists they had 2-3 minutes to clear the road

Police finally took tough action against eco zealots blocking traffic yesterday amid a warning by a Met boss that unclear laws were hindering efforts to keep the roads open.

Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists scattered within minutes of being threatened with arrest after conditions allowed officers to break up the group’s third day of ‘slow marches’ in London.

Earlier in the week, officers were forced to stand by and even protect the activists from furious commuters.

Under current laws, protesters need to be deemed to be causing ‘serious disruption’ for officers to intervene – but police chiefs are given no definition of what this actually means.

Deputy assistant commissioner Laurence Taylor, who is leading the Met’s response to the protests, revealed JSO did not cross this threshold earlier in the week because activists spent only ‘about 15 minutes’ on the road.

Just Stop Oil (JSO) activists scattered within minutes of being threatened with arrest after conditions allowed officers to break up the group’s third day of ‘slow marches’ in London on April 26

Under current laws, protesters need to be deemed to be causing ‘serious disruption’ for officers to intervene – but police chiefs are given no definition of what this actually means

But yesterday the 90 JSO supporters who descended on five locations around Westminster and Lambeth kept marching slowly down the road for far longer, allowing police to act

But yesterday the 90 JSO supporters who descended on five locations around Westminster and Lambeth kept marching slowly down the road for far longer, allowing police to act.

Mr Taylor said the vague legislation was making it ‘quite challenging’ for police to respond effectively.

A Government attempt to widen police powers to stop slow marches was killed off in the House of Lords in February by an alliance of Labour, Liberal Democrat and crossbench peers. 

It would have clarified ‘serious disruption’ and also given police the authority to shut down such disruptive protests before they took place.

Film footage of police shutting down the protest was shared on Twitter by JSO, which said ‘marching is a perfectly legal form of disruption’. 

It showed an officer telling activists they had ‘two or three minutes maximum’ to clear the road before they were arrested.

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