There’s a hidden war taking place on Britain’s streets. On the one side are the companies that own and operate some of the most iconic buildings in the country, such as The Shard, Canary Wharf and Lloyds of London’s headquarters. And on the other are the rooftoppers.
The rooftoppers are a cadre of mostly men in their 20s. Kitted out with GoPros and DSLRs, they have built careers by performing death-defying and vertigo-inducing stunts, mixing parkour, urban exploring and rooftopping – the thrill-seeking act of reaching the top of tall buildings without authorisation or safety equipment – for the viewing pleasure of millions on YouTube.
“I was an overweight 15-year-old kid. I was super unhappy [and] quite frankly a bit lost in life,” Ally Law tells me over email. Now 21, he’s one of YouTube’s most prolific rooftoppers with over 2 million subscribers. “I found parkour when I was 16 and was really into that for a few years, then I was terrified of heights and wanted to overcome that so I began to climb on top of rooftops,” he says.
This fear is clearly long extinguished, as demonstrated in countless of Law’s videos. They all follow roughly the same format, showing Law gain access to a building before inevitably attracting the attention of the police, resulting in either his arrest or a dramatic escape.
For example, in “POLICE HELICOPTER CAME FOR US! WE GOT AWAY”, posted in July this year, viewers get a first-person view of Law and his friends sneaking into the still-under-construction 103-metre Stratford Central tower in East London. They make it to the roof and celebrate by jumping around, getting perilously close to edges of the building. Soon, they realise they have been spotted by police officers on the ground and, after the police helicopter is summoned, share the tense minutes as they hide and attempt to escape. The video ends after Law makes his getaway, with a graphic linking to a store selling branded merchandise containing his catchphrase: “It’s a madness!”.
“I won't lie, running from security is pretty exciting, especially when we know we haven't done anything actually wrong,” he says. By this he explains that, in the UK, trespassing is “only” a civil offence. “There isn't a lot they can do as we aren't actually breaking any [criminal] laws.”
This is largely true. "What surprises many people is that trespass is in the main a civil offence,” explains Bryan Johnston, head of real estate litigation at law firm Dentons. “What this means is that the police cannot take immediate action to remove a trespasser from private land. What is worse is that the owner of land risks committing a criminal offence if they try to remove trespassers.”
Ally Law is just one node in the UK YouTube rooftopping network. Another is Ryan Taylor, a 26-year-old BMX rider who has turned to similar stunts in pursuit of clicks, usually involving his bike. He mostly works independently, but has occasionally collaborated with other YouTubers, including Law.
“I’m more in control when I’m riding my bike than I am when I’m walking,” Taylor says. “I see something and I know that any ordinary person would never even imagine riding their bike on that, and I just want to do it because nobody else has.” Taylor’s videos show stunts including him rushing into the Gala Baths in Walsall on his bike and jumping it off of the high-dive board as staff chase after him.
The Fight Back
Unsurprisingly, while rooftopping channels have proven popular with legions of young viewers, building owners are less than amused. “It’s incredibly resource-intensive,” says Andrew Thomson, director of property management at Real Estate Management, the company which operates The Shard – which, at 306 metres, is Europe’s tallest building and therefore an attractive target for the rooftoppers.
“You’re taking people away from what they're here to do, to tackle something that is being done because it's ‘fun’, because it goes on YouTube, because they can merchandise off the back of it, they can get sponsored off the back of it and all of those kind of things,” Thomson says.
The corporations are fighting back. Working together through groups such as the High Rise Group (HiRIG), representatives from some of London’s most iconic buildings regularly meet to share intelligence and best practice on how to deal with the likes of Law and Taylor.
One outcome of this process has been building owners and estates taking out injunctions against the rooftoppers, legally barring them from certain buildings and estates. “Its complex, its expensive, it's not a universal answer,” says Thomson. “Its a stop-gap.” The problem, as the building owners see it, is exactly what Law notes – that trespass in the UK is a civil rather than criminal offence.
This is something that Thomson would like to see change. “[Criminalisation would] create a level playing field for everywhere,” he says. “Hospitals have been climbed, churches have been climbed, all sorts of things have been climbed – those organisations shouldn't be wasting their money on getting injunctions.”
He also points to the existing precedent set by specific bylaws that enable criminal prosecution of urban explorers who intrude on the rail network.
One organisation says its security team routinely monitors the videos posted by people they see as a threat. The company, a representative for which asked that it not be named, says it recently foiled an attempted climb by one well-known rooftopper by sending a warning letter banning him from the premises after he announced his intentions on social media.
It isn’t the only company to undertake such monitoring. Documents submitted as part of an injunction filed against a number of rooftoppers by Lloyds of London reveal the extent of this tussle. They contain a report by security company VSG, which details the YouTube rooftopper scene – a group that includes both Law and Taylor, as well as others such as 20-year-old Harry Gallagher. Gallagher is better known as YouTuber “Nightscape”, who has around 900,000 subscribers and has most notoriously rooftopped Canary Wharf. In the document, he is pictured at the centre of a network diagram showing connections between different rooftoppers, as if he is the kingpin of the network. (Gallagher did not respond to requests for an interview.)
Police are also coming up with ways to deal with rooftoppers. The same injunction contained details of “Operation Sagittarius”, a City of London Police operation specifically to deal with the security and safety concerns of businesses targeted by rooftoppers. It also states that trespass incidents should be reported to the police’s counter-terrorism command, due to the fear of “hostile recon” – details on how to break through security systems and access normally off-limits areas – from information urban explorers post on social media.
Counterattack
There are signs that the direction of the war is changing. Both Law and Taylor have been embroiled in legal efforts to stop them. Most recently, the pair were convicted for two counts of aggravated trespass after sneaking into the Big Brother house – both now await sentencing. Additionally, Law has been slapped with an interim Criminal Behaviour Order, which bans him from bridges, parts of buildings not open to the public, and “any commercial property outside of business hours”. If this is breached, it could also land him in prison.
“The bigger social media has gotten, the more the police are going out of their way to do anything to stop us,” Law told me prior to his conviction. “The legal consequences are becoming a bit worrying, but we're just some boys just trying to have a bit of fun and to entertain a lot of people whilst doing so. I like to think we're not bad people, we're not out hurting anybody, stealing or damaging things.”
Law has also found himself at odds with YouTube itself, which briefly froze his ability to upload videos, citing a breach of its Community Guidelines. Reading YouTube’s policy on videos that incite dangerous behaviour, it’s not hard to see how Law found himself in the crosshairs. The last video he posted was in September, but he is determined to carry on. “I've spent four years building the channel and it's my pride and joy,” he says. “It's my whole life so I'm not going to be giving up just yet.”
When I spoke to Taylor, also prior to his Big Brother trespass conviction, he was keen to distance himself from Law and emphasised that he is shifting the focus of his channel back to less contentious BMX activities.
“I have definitely stepped away from doing stuff with Ally, just because it's turned into a different thing,” he says. “In the first stages it was just having a bit of fun and joking around but then his thing became literally just trolling security guards and trolling the police, whereas I’ve actually got businesses and companies that I own that are receiving [negative attention] from all of this crazy shit that we've been doing.”
So what does the future hold for him, as one of Britain’s most prominent rooftoppers? “A big thing for me is making sure I’m influencing the right message,” he says. “Having such a big influence on the younger generation, I want to make sure I’m putting out the right message as opposed to just putting out some bullshit that the kids are entertained by.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
