Two men attacked Ulez camera with gardening shears

Activists have been vandalising Ulez cameras in protest against the scheme
Activists have been vandalising Ulez cameras in protest against the scheme - Carl Court/Getty Images

Two men attacked a Ulez camera with gardening shears.

The pair caused nearly £3,000 worth of damage to the Ulez automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) camera on Higham Hill, Walthamstow, east London on Aug 7.

Leonard Guy, 71, of Chingford, and Steven Hislop, 55, caused £2,712 worth of damage, Thames magistrates’ court heard on Thursday.

They both admitted criminal damage to property valued under £5,000 and possessing gardening shears with intent to destroy or damage property.

District Judge Talwinder Kaur Buttar fined them both £500 each and ordered them to pay £1,356 worth of compensation to Transport for London.

They musty also pay a £200 surcharge with £85 in prosecution costs.

‘Unpaid voluntary work’

Activists have been vandalising Ulez cameras in protest against the scheme, which obliges drivers of older cars paying £12.50 per day for driving anywhere inside the M25.

Introduced by Sadiq Khan in April 2019 and originally covering central London, the scheme was gradually expanded across the entire capital with the final extension taking place in 2023.

The original plans for the Ulez were made when Boris Johnson was the mayor of London in 2015.

Some anti-Ulez vigilantes calling themselves “blade runners” have chopped down cameras used to police the clean-air scheme.

Traffic light poles holding Ulez ANPR cameras have been cut in half, spray painted and toppled to the ground across the capital over the past year.

The Metropolitan Police recorded 795 crimes relating to Ulez cameras between April and September in 2023. There were 200 reports of cameras being stolen and 595 were damaged.

One anti-Ulez vigilante calls himself Captain Gatso, a nom de guerre previously used in the 1990s by anti-speed camera activists named after the Spanish company making the devices.

Asked by Julia Hartley-Brewer, a TalkTV presenter, in August 2023 how the vandals justified the illegal destruction of cameras, Captain Gatso said: “It’s unpaid voluntary work for the community, Julia, let’s be under no illusions.

“When you are under constant attack from this Government and all the other governments previously, you have to take defensive offensive action. They’re not standing up for us.”

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