The lead officer for Peterborough United discusses his experiences
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00:14And I think a lot of it is that the parents probably don't know. They just think that their son or daughter is going off to see Peterborough United.
00:23They don't understand the sort of group that they're mixing with and, you know, the problems they could come up against with rival fans.
00:31The scheme that we run now, we've probably got 30 people on this scheme. And out of that, I would say 95% of them are policed by their parents now because they are aware of what they were doing.
00:43And it's just, I think it's just educating them on what the expectations are at a football match.
00:53Welcome, Mike. Thank you for joining us today.
01:20First of all, tell us about how you got into policing originally and then how you got into football policing specifically.
01:26So originally, I joined the Special Constabulary. I was with them for two years and I applied for the regulars.
01:33I got into the regulars and when I was on shift, I was on shift for about four years and the opportunity came up to be a, what's now an operational football officer, an OFO we refer to them as.
01:46Back in the day, they were referred to as spotters, football spotters. So I got involved with that. I did that for 20 years with Peterborough United.
01:54And then about four years ago, the position came up in ops planning to be a planner and take on the role as the dedicated football officer for Peterborough United and Peterborough Sports.
02:06Was policing your first career, first job?
02:09No, no. Prior to policing, I was in retail for a little while. I worked in a factory for a while as well.
02:14And then I, as I said, when I joined the specials, it was that was when I realised that that's what I want to do as a career.
02:21And what matches do you cover now for just Peterborough?
02:25I cover Peterborough United and Peterborough Sports who are in the National League North.
02:29OK, and are there many of you who specialise in this sort of area of work?
02:34For Peterborough United, there's myself as the dedicated football officer and then there's 12 operational football officers who work alongside me.
02:41But they have day jobs as well. So they'd only do the football when the matches are on.
02:47It's not that I only go to matches when they're picked to go to them.
02:51Yeah. And did you go for this line of work because you're a football fan or was it just something else?
02:57Yeah, I think I think from doing the the original operational football role, it was something that I enjoyed.
03:06There was a wide range of things that, you know, came with football that I wasn't aware of.
03:12So when the full time position came up, I thought that's that's what I want to do.
03:16Yeah. And am I allowed to ask who you support?
03:18You are. Yes, I actually support Queen's Park Rangers.
03:21However, they're not doing very well. And obviously, I have a passion for Peterborough United and Peterborough Sports.
03:26Yeah, good answer. And do you do you go to matches outside work or is it mainly just work time?
03:34Yeah, to be fair, it's mainly work time because that's what the role is.
03:39As such, the games that I don't, the weekends that I would have off, I'd probably spend with my family.
03:45Yeah. So give us an idea of what football policing involves.
03:48I assume it's not just being on duty on a match day. I guess it's a lot more than that.
03:53Massively. I mean, it starts from normally the end of July when the fixtures come out for the season.
03:59There would be myself, Mark Wood, who works in our intelligence department.
04:05And we would look at the fixtures with Superintendent Church, who's our standing silver for the football.
04:14And then all the games would be graded from the gradings.
04:19We would then decide what resourcing staffing we need on them and what football would be required.
04:27So I would then assign the OFOs to home and away fixtures.
04:33And then it would then be decided whether we need support from divisional officers,
04:41public order officers to be assigned to that fixture.
04:45And when you say grading, you mean, is this match going to present us with an issue?
04:51It would be a risk grading. Normally, it could be anything from an OFO, so the operational support football officers only.
05:00Or it could then go up to a low grading, which would probably be a serial with a sergeant and six officers.
05:11Then it could go on to public support units, where we could have 12 vans of police out.
05:19That's the sort of riot squad.
05:20Yeah, they're the higher risk games, yeah.
05:22Yeah, yeah. And are there any matches where you always think this is going to be high risk?
05:27Yeah, I think, to be fair, I think we tend to know through doing the football,
05:31we tend to know when the fixtures come out, which ones are going to be the higher risk games.
05:36And is that just local derbies or is it against teams as well, which have got a reputation?
05:41Yeah, I mean, it's both. Obviously, local derbies are always going to be favourable because it's a local derby.
05:47However, I think there's a lot of teams within the Football League, League One, which Peterborough United are in,
05:55who have a big following and have big risk groups that follow them.
05:59So obviously, that's when we would look at the police and operation, what we're putting on to that fixture.
06:03Yeah. And what do you find is behind the trouble that you see at matches?
06:08Obviously, you've been to a lot of matches and I assume you've seen a fair bit of trouble.
06:12Is it drink fuelled? Is it tribalism between the clubs?
06:18Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is drink fuelled because I think a lot of the games,
06:22when there are three o'clock kickoff and people come into the city here,
06:26into Peterborough at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, so they're drinking all day.
06:31I think the biggest thing nationally through football now, though, is the use of cocaine.
06:35That's quite high. And a lot of the clubs you'll find, as well as Peterborough United do,
06:41where they'll implement stuff such as dogs and stuff like that for fans when they're going into the ground.
06:49Yeah. I think that's the key to it. It mostly is drink.
06:53And again, it might start off as a bit of banter between fans,
06:58but then that progresses because somebody will lose their temper over certain things
07:02and then it escalates and that's when it becomes an issue for us.
07:06So I guess people often think of drink fuelling this sort of violence,
07:10but I'm assuming cocaine can have the same effect on people's behaviour.
07:14Absolutely. And I think that's not just at football.
07:16I think that's in general on your Friday, Saturday nights in city centres
07:21when people are using them sort of drugs, you're going to have the same effect with them.
07:28And the trouble when it kicks off, does it tend to be planned or is it spontaneous?
07:32Is it inside or outside the ground? What's the general?
07:35I think a lot of it, if I'm honest, there's stuff that people probably will try to plan through social media.
07:41But I think in football nowadays, because of the CCTV cameras,
07:48it's very hard for people to try and plan stuff and organise stuff.
07:52And, you know, the policing are on there and the football officers are on there.
07:56They're out gaining intelligence of general fans or if they see a large group gathering,
08:02they're going to go and intervene with that group.
08:04So I think the planned stuff is we don't see so much, certainly at Peterborough United.
08:08And I don't think you would at Cambridge or certainly not Peterborough Sports.
08:13And do you, I mean, are you aware, obviously you talk about risk fans,
08:17are you aware of sort of ringleaders and are you aware of groups that are going to be the ones who,
08:21you know, if it's going to kick off?
08:23Yeah, I mean, we're quite fortunate at Peterborough United.
08:26We have a few fans which we would probably class as risk fans.
08:31And again, they're the same as like the match gradings.
08:34They'd be low risk, medium risk or high risk.
08:36We don't have so many high risk fans who specifically go out to a football match to look for trouble.
08:43However, there are a number of them that could be drink led,
08:48that would step from a low risk fan, for instance,
08:53and jump up to a medium or a high risk just on the levels of drink they've had
08:57and the passion for the football.
08:59And if they see an away fan, because again,
09:03they've all got links with each other through social media.
09:06So a lot of the risk fans from clubs know each other through social media.
09:11Right. So you say the passion for the football there.
09:13So you often hear it said that they're not really football fans.
09:16They're sort of hooligans.
09:18But I guess there is some passion there as well.
09:20Yeah, absolutely.
09:21And yes, I think the days of just the football hooligans going just,
09:25and that's what we see at Peterborough United,
09:28is that you don't have a group of fans that will be going there
09:32just set on causing trouble.
09:34Most of them do go to the games.
09:36There are a few of them that don't go to the games,
09:39but they're going to town for a drink with a friend.
09:42They're the ones we would be watching and monitoring what they're doing,
09:46because that would be the concern that they're trying to arrange something.
09:49But generally, we can step in.
09:52And we're quite fortunate, like I said,
09:53we don't have that high number of high risk fans that follow Peterborough United.
09:58So what sort of qualities you need from your point of view to do your job?
10:02Are you mingling with fans or do you need a good eye for a face?
10:08I think ultimately, at the same event, any of the football officers,
10:12you've got to be able to talk to fans and engage in conversation with them
10:18and build up that trust with them,
10:19because albeit that, yes, we're there to stop any disorder
10:23and any offences being committed,
10:26ultimately, we still want to be approachable,
10:28so people can ask us stuff,
10:30because it is only a small minority of people who cause problems.
10:33The rest of the people want to go and have a good day at football
10:36with their children and their family.
10:38So we want to be approachable,
10:39as opposed to just laying the law down with everybody and banning everybody,
10:44because that's not what we're out to achieve.
10:47No, yeah.
10:48So you've been in football policing now for what, you said 20 plus years?
10:5220 plus years, yeah.
10:53Have you seen things changing in that time?
10:55Do you think it has changed since you first began to today?
10:58Is it better or worse?
11:00I think the football violence is increasing a little bit now,
11:05and I don't know whether that's because they're in the 80s,
11:09when obviously football violence was massive and it was all over the press.
11:15Some of the people seem to have left the scene,
11:18whether that's because they've started families and had children,
11:20but then as the years have gone on,
11:22those people are coming back to the football scene.
11:25Some of them are a bit older and wiser,
11:27so they're not so influenced by stuff,
11:30but I think a lot of the youth groups,
11:33the young lads and girls that we see at football,
11:38some of them are involved in certain bits.
11:41I think they're influenced a lot by what's on TV, the films,
11:45Green Street and your football factories and stuff like that,
11:48and they want to be a part of that, if you like.
11:52I think, again, nationally, the problem is with the youth groups,
11:57as opposed to the older fans.
12:00OK. That moves me on to the next question, actually,
12:03because I was wondering, there seems to be a general perception
12:06that things were bad in the 80s and 90s, and now things have improved.
12:10Is that your perception as well?
12:12Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely.
12:15Do you think that's the difference between the people attending the games?
12:18Have a lot of people been priced out of it?
12:21Yeah, I think a lot of it is to do with that,
12:24because it is an expensive day to attend a football match,
12:28especially in a way fixture.
12:30But also, again, I think the policing has got a lot better around football.
12:35There's more officers involved in it, more specialised officers,
12:39other departments get involved, licensing and people like that,
12:43and that's what I think is more a collaborative thing in the force,
12:47that various departments work together to achieve the same thing on a football match.
12:53Yeah, so it's a good story.
12:55Yeah.
12:56Now, I understand you may be the first officer from Cambridgeshire
12:59to be an England football spotter.
13:01That must have made you proud.
13:04Very proud, yeah.
13:05Yeah?
13:06Pinnacle of my career, without a doubt.
13:08Oh, brilliant.
13:09Yeah, and you got to go to the Euros.
13:11Yeah, I went to Germany for six weeks, yeah.
13:13Yeah, what was that like?
13:14Fantastic.
13:15Yeah?
13:16Really, really good, yeah.
13:17Like I said, the German police looked after us really well.
13:21I was working with a team that were with the federal police,
13:26so more on airports and the railway stations.
13:31But, yeah, it was absolutely fantastic.
13:33And how did that come about?
13:34How did you get that privilege?
13:37Every now and then the United Kingdom Football Policing Unit
13:41put out applications for overseas football officers,
13:46so I applied for it.
13:48I didn't hear anything for quite a while,
13:50and then I received a phone call to ask if I would want to be part of the team
13:55that was going out there.
13:57I think it was because Germany had increased the UK policing
14:01that they wanted out there.
14:03So, yeah, I was fortunate enough to be asked,
14:05and, yeah, I grabbed the opportunity where I could.
14:08Brilliant, yeah.
14:09And was that just England matches?
14:12Yeah, that's what we were concentrating on, just the England matches.
14:16It's not just the match day.
14:17It's normally like the day before or a couple of days before on some occasions,
14:23and it was just monitoring airports and the railway stations and such like.
14:27And, again, for us out there,
14:29it was more of a point of contact for the England fans,
14:33which I think they appreciated.
14:36That was the impression I got because some people were going to different countries.
14:40They don't know where they're supposed to be going,
14:42so we were there as liaising with them more than anything
14:45and obviously keeping our eye out for fans that we would consider to be problematic.
14:50Right. So did you have to sort of learn a lot for that?
14:53Because obviously you're a specialist on Peterborough and local fans.
14:57Did you have to sort of start memorising national risk?
15:02Well, I think a lot of it was because there was quite a number of officers from various clubs there.
15:08We would be working in teams with other club members, if you like.
15:13And, again, not stereotyping with anybody,
15:16but a lot of the people, they draw attention to themselves with their behaviour
15:20when they get to certain airports.
15:22So that then heightens out.
15:25We're a bit concerned about them,
15:27so we would then go and interact with them and start talking to them,
15:30find out where they're from and do what we need to do from there.
15:33Yeah. And did you get to watch any games or was it purely sort of work?
15:38Yeah, it was.
15:39I mean, we saw some of the fixtures from fan zones where we were deployed,
15:45but generally that was mainly it, yeah.
15:48So good atmosphere at some of those, I'd imagine.
15:51Fantastic.
15:52Yeah, good.
15:54And just finally, a question about the future.
15:59Where do you think football policing is going in the future?
16:03Is there a role for stuff like facial recognition?
16:06Is that already being used?
16:08Yeah, that's being used in some forces.
16:10I think a lot of it with football now is, again,
16:15because, as I said earlier, with the youth groups,
16:18I think it's more an intervention thing that a lot of forces are doing.
16:22Our force certainly do it.
16:23We do a thing called the yellow card scheme,
16:26which looks at the younger elements of fans
16:30and dealing with them without prosecuting them.
16:33So we would give them initially a community protection warning,
16:38and then if their behaviour continued to be what we don't expect it to be,
16:45we would then up that to a community protection notice.
16:49And then from that, they would then obviously come in the realms
16:53of being arrested for offences.
16:55So I think a lot of it is prevention and working,
16:58because, again, with a lot of the kids, it's safeguarding as well.
17:02And I think we're quite fortunate in this force that we go into schools,
17:07we go into clubs, and we do talks about the expectations
17:11of what a football fan should be doing,
17:14because a lot of these youngsters don't understand
17:16that a pyrotechnic is illegal to be setting off,
17:20or their behaviour, some of the things they might do at a football match,
17:24isn't acceptable and is actually on the lines of committing criminal offences.
17:29So I think a lot of it is the intervention,
17:31and that's what I think needs to be going forward.
17:34Yes, I'm guessing children can get drawn into that world, can't they?
17:37Might be quite attractive of being part of a group of fans, matches.
17:42Absolutely.
17:43And I think a lot of it is that their parents probably don't know,
17:47they just think their son or daughter is going off to see Peterborough United,
17:51don't understand the sort of group that they're mixing with
17:54and the actual problems they could come up against with rival fans.
18:01So when we intervene and we get the parents in
18:05to speak to the parents and the children,
18:07if I'm honest, the scheme that we run now,
18:10we've probably got 30 people on this scheme,
18:12and out of that I would say 95% of them are policed by their parents now
18:18because they are aware of what they were doing.
18:20So if they come to a football match, which we want everybody to go to,
18:24their parents will be with them to look after their children instead of...
18:27That's good news.
18:28Is that a fairly new type of scheme than that?
18:30It is.
18:31It's a scheme that was introduced at Peterborough,
18:35Inspector Sam Tucker and myself, we do it at Peterborough.
18:39Mark Howe does it at Cambridge.
18:42But we've also had a lot of interest from other forces,
18:45Greater Manchester Police now take it on board,
18:48and I think it's Northumbria, and we had Northern Ireland Police as well,
18:54they were interested in what we were doing to combat the youth risk.
18:58Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?
18:59Because obviously we get this in a lot of other areas of policing,
19:03radicalisation, that sort of thing, grooming,
19:05and I suppose children are going to be as attracted to some of the aspects
19:14of being part of a football risk group.
19:18Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
19:20I think that's the problem, is that people look at films,
19:25they look at social media,
19:28they go out and buy the gear that's associated, if you like,
19:32with football fans, and stereotypically somebody would look at them
19:37and say they're a football hooligan,
19:39when they've probably never been involved in any football
19:41in violence of their life, but because of what they're wearing,
19:44they then become a bit of a target, and I think it's just educating them,
19:48and certainly some of these youngsters on what the expectations are
19:53at a football match and what's likely to happen if you do X or Y sort of thing,
19:57and yeah, I think it's been successful at Peterborough, certainly.
20:00Yeah, you've been involved in this for a long while,
20:03any sort of abiding memories from your career up to now,
20:06any particularly memorable matches?
20:09No, I think it was when Peterborough United were in the Championship,
20:13the only memorable thing I've got is that when they played Queen's Park Rangers
20:17and they were beaten three times by Peterborough United,
20:19so that was quite memorable for me, certainly with some of the Peterborough fans
20:22who are aware that I support Queen's Park Rangers,
20:25so they certainly made that quite clear.
20:27And no trouble?
20:28No, no.
20:29And how long do you plan to continue for?
20:31You've obviously been doing it for a long while.
20:33Do you plan on staying in it for...?
20:35Hopefully, yeah. I hopefully will be, yeah, see my career out in it.
20:39That's my intention, because I enjoy it, and I think the way it's progressing,
20:43it's certainly changed in the times that I've been doing it,
20:46with, as I said, it's more the intervention work and the safeguarding work,
20:50which I don't think in the past has ever been looked at upon football policing,
20:56and I think that's a big step forward, and yeah, hopefully I'll continue.