The second of this two-part article about a night behind the scenes at Kidderminster Harriers.
We pick up the story disussing arrests and ejections from football grounds. Is it a case of lies, damned lies and statistics?<br><br>To recap, arrests and ejections were the subject of assistant safety officer Jim Chalmers’ University of Portsmouth dissertation, part of his BSc in risk and security management. While it might sound a dry topic, it goes to the heart of the way a venue does security. Do you do it based on what you think the threats are, or on the basis of recorded incidents, so that you know what has happened, when, and you can predict what may happen, next, and train and deploy accordingly? Arrests are by police; so how good an indication are they of a stadium that generally has no police presence? Kidderminster being one of many lower league clubs that seldom sees police, and relies on stewards. Do ejections, by stewards, give a more accurate picture of trouble in stadia? And there is no consistency in club policies towards ejection, nor of recording ejections. <br><br>Lies and statistics<br><br>Ejection statistics can mislead like any others. How can you compare a malicious pitch invasion by people wanting to hurt others, with a joyous crowd incursion, as done by Kidderminster fans at the end of the FA Trophy semi-final at Northwich, when the fans knew they were in the final? Kidderminster has seen no ejections of home fans in the 2006-7 season; the club says with reason that it means fans are largely well-behaved. But it could have meant that the club takes a laissez-faire approach! A trouble with any ejection and arrest statistics is that they become a barometer of crime, pounced on by the media. Is an ejection for breach of ground regulations against smoking as bad as an ejection for fighting? In practice, you cannot eject or arrest a block of fans for standing in seated areas – a chronic problem at the big stadia – or for racist or (in Scotland) sectarian chanting. If a club (or indeed another sport such as cricket) takes a no-tolerance approach to racism, and ejects many fans, does that club or sport have more of a problem (and bad publicity) than a club or sport that turns a blind eye, or rather a deaf ear? <br><br>Dilemmas<br><br>This issue throws up dilemmas between strict security and the need for business income. Is it easier to turn away a visiting fan, who will only come through your turnstiles once, than a home fan who is potentially a regular paying customer (£13 a time at Kidderminster)? Shopping malls, pubs and other premises surely have this dilemma between not wanting to turn away revenue, and having to deal with, not necessarily even trouble-makers, but the pains in the neck in every community. In a word, how does a shopping centre, a football or other stadium, the leisure sector, or a hopsital or college, manage its space? What is unacceptable behaviour, and what do you do about it? Without statistics about ejections and arrests, what do you have to go on? To quote from Jim’s dissertation: "As a result of the football financial revolution during the 1990s due to the creation of all-seated stadia and television revenue, the game of football has become an event no longer in the main enjoyed by the working class but by people from all walks of life. If this is accepted, it can be argued that the central point about spectator ejections is how [football] clubs administer their policy to manage an event given the wide range of people now attending matches." <br><br>Coin throwing<br><br>Jim favours collating of ejection numbers, as an indicator. Counting incidents according to nationally agreed criteria – in a word, intelligence-gathering – can be of use, as in any sector of security, to alert managers to trends. To go back to coin throwing; as Jim says, the act can be over in a millisecond. As I saw after the match, stewards search the goalmouth on the field and stands in case of any thrown objects. When Kidderminster found two pence pieces on the floor, as a precaution a plain-clothes steward stood in the area, like a supporter, to see if there was anything happening; there wasn’t. Jim adds: "You can’t stop it, if someone is determined to throw a coin; it isn’t being defeatist; but the consequences can be very serious, so it’s a case of highlighting to stewards to keep eyes open." Inside the control room during the game, in contrast to Coventry City, when a police officer was in charge, at Kidderminster a uniformed police officer comes in but only to chat with safety officer Pete Smith. Picking up on Jim’s dissertation, I ask him to compare security sporting events with other branches of the leisure sector. Jim answered with a question; how many are ejected from a city’s nightclubs; nobody knows. So how can you draw comparisons?! Another point is that football and other sports stadia are tending to offer multiple, 24-hour attractions, beyond sport. Ricoh Arena for instance hosts exhibitions, and a Rod Stewart concert in the summer; it has a hotel and nearby supermarket; and hopes to open a casino. The biggest stadia such as Manchester United, featured in the March issue of Professional Security, and the new Emirates Stadium in north London, have become everyday tourist attractions, offering club shops, museums, and so forth. Security at such venues has to respond to the risks associated with different clienteles, at times beyond the traditional Saturday 3pm football kick-off. Games like this one against Burton Albion on a weekday evening may place different demands on stewards, who are largely doing the work as a second job, and may find it hard to turn up soon after a working day. That said, Jim Chalmers does run on his laptop a computer programme to keep track of no-shows by stewards, to spot if any staff are falling by the wayside, and to act accordingly. <br><br>Age discrimination<br><br>Some changes that Jim mentions include age discrimination law; no longer can a club advertise for stewards aged 18 to 55. Rather, you must ask for people fit and physically capable of doing the job. If applicants are 77 and have done the London Marathon, they can have the job! And Jim raises the smoking ban from July: "It will be interesting to see how it will be received by the fans." The no-smoking rule inside public spaces such as pubs, restaurants and hospitals is already in force in Scotland. It’s clear that the ban should apply to places such as executive boxes, enclosed. But what of a stand open to the weather? And what if (as with persistent standing at some seated stadia) large numbers of fans defy the rule? Might it come to clubs searching fans for cigarettes at the turnstiles? Jim wonders, with a grin on his face. Pete Smith reports that the Ricoh Arena is already no-smoking, and the stadium has a ‘pass-out system’ whereby smokers are let out at half time in a controlled way so that they can have a cigarette. In the second half, I notice that the CCTV operator is keeping an eye on one fan behind the visiting team’s goalmouth. The match ended 0-0. Fans as ever filed away quickly and quietly, but the CCTV operator kept following the man, who was with a woman, as he wandered out of the ground, sometimes raising his hands, and shouting. Meanwhile stewards did their regular checks of the ground that all was in order; supervisers did their debrief of stewards; and Jim and Pete debriefed the supervisers. Meanwhile from the CCTV monitor it was plain that something was not well with the man, though only the woman he was with was taking any note. While the rest of the crowd was leaving, he made his way to the car park behind the main stand, images from another dome by now on the spot monitor. Over the radio a steward said the suspicious man was outside the club shop and was heading for the Harriers Arms, the pub next door. "He looks trouble and out for some aggro," came over the radio. He indeed went into the pub, and until the control room shut until the next time, the camera stayed on the pub door in case of trouble. A sign, then, that trouble or potential trouble in a football stadium at one moment can become trouble at some other place – a pub, a cinema, a bus or train station. p<br><br>About Jim Chalmers: retired West Midlands Police chief superintendent; then 1991-2003, Football Licensing Authority inspector. In 1996, assisted government of Guatemala after 88 fans crushed to death in national stadium in a Hillsborough-like disaster. In 2005, elected president of Football Safety Officers Association. With Steve Frosdick, the co-author of Safety and security at sports grounds (2005, paperback, 231 pages, Paragon Publishing, in association with Stadium and Arena Management. ISBN 1 899820 16 7). Now deputy safety officer at Coventry City FC, and assistant safety officer at Kidderminster, where Pete Smith is the safety officer. Recently appointed (unpaid) safety adviser to the Nationwide Conference. Visit:
