Occupy London at St. Paul’s Cathedral Cost Police $1.5M

Occupy London protesters who camped outside St. Paul’s Cathedral for more than four months cost City of London Police more than 911,000 pounds ($1.5 million) to monitor, according to their response to a Freedom of Information request.

The protest encampment, the anti-capitalism campaigners’ largest in London, cost 525,257 pounds to move officers from other duties and 386,434 pounds in expenses such as overtime, City of London Police said in an e-mail.

The police said the cost didn’t include three other protest camps and squats formed in and around the City of London. No employment hours were lost to staff injury in policing the movement, according to the e-mail.

Wealth disparities fueled protests around the globe last year. The Occupy Movement began in September, when protesters took up residence in New York’s Zuccotti Park to highlight the plight of Americans who suffered even as the largest U.S. banks recovered from the 2008 financial crisis.

Demonstrators inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York moved to St. Paul’s in October, leading to the cathedral’s temporary closure later that month. Police dismantled tents and makeshift shelters as they evicted Occupy London demonstrators from their campsite outside St. Paul’s on Feb. 28.

Evicting protesters from their encampment around City Hall in November cost Los Angeles taxpayers $2.35 million, officials said Dec. 23. The New York police department spent $7 million in overtime on the protests, while Boston spent $575,000, the Associated Press reported in November.

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Spillane in London at cspillane3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Blackman at ablackman@bloomberg.net.

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April 4 (Bloomberg) -- London demonstrators, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, have been living in a camp on Finsbury Square since October 2011. The Borough of Islington has warned protesters they are trespassing as an application for a new food market for the site is considered. (Source: Bloomberg)