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Date: 2nd March 2025
Stop and think not stop and search
For some people, particularly those it disproportionately affects, the phrase “Stop and Search” is triggering. I don’t mean in some kind nonsensical manner that it makes people scream in agony and throw themselves underneath tables as if they suffer from PTSD at the very mention of Vietnam. I mean that it is a draconian measure used at times where racial profiling is more prominent than it ever should be.
It’s a bit like kettling for some fans in terms of how authorities deal with their legitimate form of expression, which sometimes is mixed in with an illegitimate thrust of violence. There are many supporters, the length and breadth of the United Kingdom who have mixed legitimate anger with wrongful, spirited, physical intervention, which has delegitimized their grievances. The use of kettling can be triggering because of the way that it was used time and time and time again in order to try and avert disorder by Police Scotland.
And so, the news this weekend that Police Scotland have been given special powers in order to stop and search fans, for me, is due to the fact that a number of incidents recently of flares at matches have led the authorities to try and find a draconian way to deal with the entire melee surrounding their use. It’s unfortunate because once again, Scottish football has been found out. It cannot police itself properly and people are attempting to now intervene as their right to police. The clue is perhaps in the name Police Scotland.
Fans attending derbies in particular, but just games in general, need to be prepared to think and act accordingly.
Previously deployed to curb bonfire night trouble in Edinburgh, the stop and search powers that have been granted to Police Scotland between the hours of half past ten and half past four on Sunday within the city centre and Leith may well be a legitimate response, indeed a proportionate response to the problem of flares. However, you cannot deny that this has been something that has rumbled on for a long period of time and there would seem to be simply inaction in various parts to achieve a means of dealing with it properly. Scottish football has always claimed it can look after itself and look after its own. Over the last couple of weeks, I have seen a tick tock of Duncan Ferguson once again claiming that he was badly mistreated when he was put in prison after having been warned by a sheriff, that if he was violent again that that could be the likely outcome. Mr Ferguson then chose to head butt somebody in front of a full stadium and on national television, and therefore not necessarily heeding – or heading – the warning. One would suggest that if you were his lawyer that perhaps you should be suggesting to him that listening to what he has been told is a better way of looking after his liberty than ignoring it completely.
And so again here we are the Scottish football ignoring the issue rather than dealing with it.
And finding themselves once again part of a national programme of another organisation, Police Scotland, having to step in and try and deal with it. Part of the justification from authorities, that appeared in the media, was violence directed at officers during a disorder between a Hibs and Motherwell game in October. The Tynecastle Boxing Day Derby also saw three men arrested and charged for carrying or using pyrotechnics. And so the Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, allowing Police Scotland to intervene and remove any item an officer believes is being used wholly or partly for the purposes of concealing their identity, as well as searching those on foot and in vehicles, means that we are getting closer and closer to the point where Police Scotland will find themselves being used to police fans within Scottish football.
Whilst on the one hand I am a little upset that such moves are being made because nobody is sitting around a table to discuss the issue, I am heartened by the fact that Police Scotland feel that they have the right to intervene. I think, given that Scottish football can simply not stop the chanting on the terraces and are unable to stop some of the homophobic, abuse and racial incidents that are increasingly happening, we should be welcoming Police Scotland with increased presences in all of Scottish football grounds. If we cannot, they can challenge and put under the microscope individuals who feel that it is absolutely correct and right to abuse anybody on the basis of colour or sexuality at any point.
Scottish football can’t get rid of them, because it is a societal problem, people say, and they are right. Recently a number of people, have found in theatres in Manchester and London, an emboldened opportunity to stand up in the middle of a performance and shout homophobic abuse at a cast. They are rightly removed from the theatre but disrupt and stop a production because people are hearing abuse that we believed had been consigned to the 1970s. Therefore, if it is, a societal issue then Scottish football has to stand aside and allow society to deal with it. If they are unable to find a solution, they should hold their hands up and get out of the way for those who have the powers to do exactly that.
My worry is that once again what will happen is that people will scream and ball and shout that Police Scotland are doing anything never mind that they should be balling and shouting at people who are doing nothing.
And so let us hope that fans who get caught up in the idea that participating in the flares at the ground rather than being a jolly jape that everybody else is doing so they are just joining in what is an illegal act that they think again. People who are involved in the flares can end up with a criminal record so should think better of it. It is important that what we have in our terraces are people who can stop and think and not be stopped and searched on their way to the game.
This article is a personal view. The SFSA does not believe that Scottish football and the football authorities are ignoring this issue.
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