Five Boston climate protestors who tried to use “sleeping dragon” barrel devices to chain themselves together to block traffic on a highly-trafficked city ramp were arrested on Wednesday morning, according to the Massachusetts State Police Department.

A department spokesperson said Joseph H. Rogers, 55, of Lyndeborough, New Hampshire, Grant F. Rockett, 64, of Jamaica Plain, Mark A. Dugan, 54, of Newton, Jennifer M. Smith, 48, of Watertown and Mary E. Hansen, 67, of Jamaica Plain, were all charged with trespassing on state property, disorderly conduct and conspiracy to commit a crime in relation with the pre-planned environmental protest.

Five protesters were detained on the ramp from Leverett Circle, in Boston’s West End, to Interstate 93, according to the Massachusetts State Police, which said it was monitoring protest activity after an advocacy organization pledged to disrupt traffic in protest of the fossil fuel industry.

Extinction Rebellion — which describes itself as “a politically non-partisan international movement” using nonviolent protest to bring attention to what it called a “climate and ecological emergency” — asked supporters to meet in Boston Wednesday morning to “meet rush hour commuters.”

On its website, the group told protesters to meet at 7 a.m. in Post Office Square before marching through downtown Boston at 7:30 a.m. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation warned the group planned to disrupt travel on several main commuting routes in Boston.

State troopers seized two vehicles that the trespassers had parked in two separate travel lanes to block traffic at the busy intersection, according to officials.

Protestors use "sleeping dragons" to secure themselves together, with their arms fed through a pipe or tube that runs through barrel.

One of the seized vehicles, a 2017 Ford F250 pickup truck, was carrying three 55-gallon steel drum barrels with holes cut into them and steel pipes running through the holes, a device known as a “sleeping dragon,” officials said. A fourth incomplete “sleeping dragon” device was also discovered.

A “sleeping dragon” is an improvised device made by protestors to secure themselves together, with their arms fed through a pipe or tube that runs through barrels through holes cut into them, according to state police. The device is typically used to lock protestors’ hands together inside the barrels.

State police said protestors were attempting to use multiple devices to form a roadblock at the busy intersection. The intersection connects drivers to and from the Tobin Bridge, I-93, Storrow Drive, Nashua Street and Charles River Dam Road.

Minutes after troopers cleared the trespassers and prevented them from blocking the road, police said at least two ambulances drove through the area that would have otherwise been gridlocked.

In Aug. 2020, eight members of Extinction Rebellion were arrested for trespassing after hanging a banner on the Citgo sign that read “Climate Justice Now.”

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