£261,000 bill over policing EDL protests in the West Midlands
Policing English Defence League demonstrations and marches in the West Midlands has cost more than £260,000.
The £261,117 costs came for three EDL rallies in the past three years. The most expensive of the operations was to keep control of an event in Birmingham Centenary Square on October 29, 2011.
That alone cost the West Midlands force, which needs to save £126 million by 2015, £162,647.
Officers were also deployed to a demonstration in Walsall on September 29 last year, which saw ugly scenes and brought parts of the town centre to the standstill. It cost the public purse £83,630.
A further event on January 26 this year, also in Centenary Square, cost £14,840. It comes after 60 people walked into Birmingham New Road, Wolverhampton, last Friday in what they called a 'flash demo'.
Gina Lycett, police spokeswoman, said the force needed to ensure people could go about their business in a 'safe and unthreatening environment' by restricting planned protests to specific areas. But they also had a duty to facilitate peaceful protest in keeping with demonstrators' democratic rights.
