A faulty smoke alarm dumped in a rubbish bin sparked a major bomb alert which shut down part of Perth city centre.
Police threw a cordon across busy Edinburgh Road on Thursday after reports of a strange, electronic beeping noise.
A stretch of road from HMP Prison to Marshall Place was locked down for two hours as officers investigated the suspect device.
Officers on cycles patrolled the South Inch site and kept members of the public, including dog walkers and council staff, at bay.
Local police consulted with the army’s explosives team in Edinburgh on how to handle the suspect package, while lengthy tailbacks of traffic were diverted through a network of side streets.
Emergency services were called to the scene at around 10.45am.
A specialist police searcher was tasked with approaching and searching the public bin.
He found and deactivated a small smoke alarm. It was emitting a loud bleeping noise to indicate its battery was flat.
A police spokesman described the incident as a “false alarm with good intent”. He said: “We were responding to a call about an unusual beeping noise coming from a bin at the South Inch.
“The cordon was placed around the area as a precaution and a trained searcher was later sent in to investigate.”
He said: “At the end of the day it was nothing more than a smoke alarm, but of course we do have to take incidents like this seriously.”
Crowds at the cordon cheered when the repetitive beeping was finally switched off.
Among those held up was a group of charity cyclists, dressed in skin coloured bodysuits.
Thursday’s alert comes just weeks after a suspicious package sparked a similar scare at Newburgh.
Police locked down the high street when a brown envelope was discovered on the street, outside the post office.
Perth and North Perthshire MP Pete Wishart praised emergency crews for their response to yesterday’s incident.
“I would like to pay my thanks to Police Scotland for responding to this call in a quick and professional manner,” he said. “Whilst it did not turn out to be a serious incident on this occasion, it is important that members of the public feel confident in being able to report concerns to the authorities.”
