Early results–too many police on duty, too few talk to fans
• Annual cost of policing professional football totals £48m
David Conn
Thu 24 Oct 2019 00.01 BSTLast modified on Thu 24 Oct 2019 00.12 BST
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A report last season said high deployment of officers, including those trained for riot and public order control, was often unnecessary and could increase tensions. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire/PA Images
The English
Football League is to fund research into match-day policing aimed at managing potential flashpoints with a more progressive approach to supporters. The long-term objective of the study is for the police to deploy fewer officers at games.
The project, termed “Enable”, carried out observations at five matches last season and reached three key findings: the risks of violence were generally lower than the police had expected, too many officers were on duty and too few talked to supporters.
It also suggested forces did not respond by reducing officer numbers when information based on “very weak” evidence proved unfounded.
The EFL hopes supporting research and match observations for a further two years will help reduce costs and the number of officers allocated to matches.
Enable, led by academics Prof Clifford Stott and Dr Geoff Pearson, cites an estimated annual cost of £48m to police professional football, of which only £5m is borne by clubs since they are legally responsible only for policing on land they own or control on match days.
Last season’s Enable report concluded that high deployment of officers, including those trained for riot and public order control, was often unnecessary and could actually escalate tensions.
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It also proved too costly and took resources away from more pressing areas of policing.
“Despite the good practices we observed, such high levels of resourcing are not sustainable, and consideration must be given to ways of reducing the demand and level of resourcing involved in policing football,” the report said.
Several forces have made changes following work by Enable, including the deployment of police liaison teams tasked with talking to supporter groups and placing less emphasis on police riot squads.
West Yorkshire police, whose recently retired chief superintendent, Owen West, is a senior consultant with Enable, have reduced their deployments at Leeds, Huddersfield and Bradford.
Lancashire police, also part of Enable, reported this week it had cut its resources by 35% from last season for Leeds’ visit to Preston and there had been no incidents of disorder and no arrests at Tuesday’s match.
John Nagle, the EFL’s head of policy, said: “The aim of the project is to promote collaboration between football clubs and police forces to encourage a progressive dialogue about the best, most efficient ways to police football matches and help develop cutting edge crowd management techniques, and so to improve the match-day experience for supporters and help reduce the financial burden on club and policing budgets.”
One of last season’s matchday observations found that a group of away fans police had designated as “high risk” potential troublemakers were in fact less inclined to disorder than the pre-match intelligence. Enable’s report concluded: “In contrast to pre-event police expectations there has been little evidence of any major underlying risk that was brought about by groups travelling to these events who were conspiring to precipitate disorder … It was evident that the intelligence picture is often very weak and bore little relationship to the risk that actually emerged. In addition, we noted very little critical analysis of this intelligence.”
The report argued for “a comprehensive advance” in methods of assessing how supporters are likely to behave, a greater recognition by police that fans have the right to freedom of assembly, association and expression, and for an “increased emphasis” on engaging and communicating with supporters.
The Football Supporters’ Association, which has long campaigned for more progressive policing, is a participant in Enable, contributing its own observations of match-day operations. The FSA chief executive, Kevin Miles, said: “The initiative isn’t without its challenges but we have already seen positive changes in how supporters are policed. It’s already clear supporters respond far better to a community-driven, engaged style of policing as opposed to always being treated as a potential public-order problem.”
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