Just Stop Oil hits back after criticism from Met over policing cost: 'We will not die quietly'

Police say a 13-week campaign by Just Stop Oil has cost them more than £7.7 million, as a senior Met officer decried their actions as more crime than protest.

But the anti-fossil fuel climate action group has hit back - saying his comments were a clear indication legitimate protest was now being treated like a crime.

The Metropolitan Police force has monitored or responded to 515 protests carried out by Just Stop Oil (JSO) since April, LBC reports, including 13 weeks of persistent slow marches down many of London's major roads, as well as disruption of high-profile sporting and cultural events.

More than 270 people have been arrested so far, and JSO show no sign of slowing down yet, with recent high profile actions involving alleged activists scattering confetti on the court at Wimbledon, invading the Proms stage at the Royal Albert Hall, and interrupting a live broadcast of Channel 4’s The Last Leg.

Other protest actions have targeted everything from the Chelsea Flower Show, to the London Pride Parade, to spray-painting the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero building. But the climate activists have also faced growing hostility, and sometimes even violence or assault.

Speaking on LBC on Monday, 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..

“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.”

Twist said JSO actions were "really unique" in protest terms, but did not hesitate to criticise them. "In any democratic society, the right to protest is, rightly, heavily protected... But this isn't protest, this is crime, and there is a difference."

He continued: "When you get into very deliberately causing serious disruption to the public of London, stopping people going about their daily business, stopping people going to work, or to hospital, or taking their children to school, then that tips over into crime."

The Met said the latest £7.7 million was on top of £7.5 million spent by the force policing protest action by JSO between October and December last year.

However, a Just Stop Oil spokesperson told NationalWorld: "There you have it, the result of the Policing Act in black and white - legitimate protest is now classed as crime."

They continued: "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."