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Climate activists have targeted car tyres as a way of committing a victimless crime, but that won't be the case anymore in Antwerp, Source: Depositphotos
Following a period of debate on whether the tactic favoured by environmental activists represents damage to private property
Starting from 1 October, the police in Antwerp will issue fines to people caught deflating the tyres of cars that don’t belong to them. The punishment was necessitated by the increasing frequency of climate activists employing that tactic on SUVs as a way of protesting their harmful presence on urban streets.
Reaching the decision to make the act a punishable offence was not easy apparently since there were considerable debates about whether this constitutes damage to private property. After all, letting the air out of the tyres doesn’t cost the victim additional expenses and doesn’t lower the value of the car.
It does, however, cost the owners of the targeted vehicles time and inconvenience in the sense that they have to reinflate the tyres before they can drive their SUVs.
That is why the mayor of Antwerp, Bart De Wever, decided to adjust the police regulations.
"Suppose an on-call doctor is urgently called to a patient, or a technician is called for a large-scale malfunction. We must combat this phenomenon decisively and purposefully," he exclaimed, quoted by VRT.
In that light, he determined that deflating tyres does represent damage to property and a type of vandalism.
Will criminalizing the act of deflating other cars’ tyres deter the work of activist organizations, such as the aptly named Tyre Extinguishers (the main culprit behind these activities)?
If another Belgian city – Ghent – is taken as an example, it appears that it will not have much of an effect.
The same measure was introduced in Ghent a few months ago. If activists are caught, they risk a fine of up to 500 euros. However, no one has been caught yet.
The climate activists themselves have also issued a statement claiming that the measure will not dissuade them from continuing in their mission to show that big, polluting and dangerous SUVs have no place on Belgian streets.
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Following a period of debate on whether the tactic favoured by environmental activists represents damage to private property
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Following a period of debate on whether the tactic favoured by environmental activists represents damage to private property
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