Yahoo Finance Police ‘astounded’ after breaking up party of 30 people on wealthy London street
Watch: Police break up London house party
Bodycam footage shows police breaking up a house party of more than 30 guests in an affluent part of London, which left the organiser facing a £10,000 fine.
Metropolitan Police officers stopped the gathering in Kensington and Chelsea after they were called to a report of loud music coming from a flat.
On approach, they heard shouting coming from the property in Cadogan Gardens and found more than 30 people drinking, eating and playing music, leaving one officer “astounded” at the rule-breaking.
Coronavirus regulations for Tier 3, which London was in at the time, do not permit indoor socialising with people you don’t live with or who are outside your support bubble.
In the footage, officers are seen telling everyone who doesn’t live there to go home, and a man who said he was the organiser now faces a £10,000 fine, the Met said.
The gathering took place on 17 December, just after London was put into Tier 3 restrictions and days before it entered the new, tougher Tier 4 amid fears about the new coronavirus variant.
London’s cases have spiked since early December and 9,458 were reported for the capital on Monday, with the UK reporting 33,364 cases and 215 deaths.
The Met’s PC James Berridge-Cane said: “I am astounded that people are putting themselves, their families and their friends at risks by hosting flat parties and possibly spreading this virus.
“This is a critical time for London. Our infection rate is sadly on the rise and we all need to pull together to drive down the rate of infection and protect our families and the NHS.”
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