{"id":199955,"date":"2025-06-20T13:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T13:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/199955\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T13:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T13:25:12","slug":"walsall-football-thug-admits-assaulting-police-officer-during-villa-park-disorder-described-as-worst-football-violence-in-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/199955\/","title":{"rendered":"Walsall football thug admits assaulting police officer during Villa Park disorder described as ‘worst football violence in decades’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dawid Dembler, 35, of Anson Road, Walsall<\/a>, admitted to assaulting an emergency worker on what should have been the first day of a trial held at Birmingham Crown Court<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The conviction comes following a ‘large disorder’<\/a> at Birmingham’s Villa Park in November 2023 during Aston Villa’s UEFA Europa Conference League match against Legia Warsaw.<\/p>\n

During what has been described as the ‘worst football violence in decades’, five officers were injured, \u00a0more than 40 people were arrested and 700 hours of body-worn camera footage was reviewed as part of a major investigation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

West Midlands Police officers worked alongside colleagues from 11 forces – with officers sustaining 90 minutes of sustained violence, where flares, missiles, \u00a0and debris were used as weapons by supporters of the Polish football club.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dembler’s conviction comes after he ran up behind an officer during the disorder, attacked him, and then fled. Dembler was wearing a mask at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"DawidDawid Dembler<\/p>\n

Despite running from the scene, other officers saw what had happened and moved in to arrest Dembler for assault.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Detective Inspector Tom Lyons, who has been overseeing the ongoing investigation into the disorder on the night, said: “You can see from the footage that this was a cowardly attack on an officer who had his back turned as he worked hard to contain a violent crowd of away fans at the Witton Lane coach park gate.<\/p>\n

“It caused the PC to stumble forward, but thankfully there was no lasting injury and quick work by officers nearby meant Dembler was swiftly identified and arrested.<\/p>\n

“Because of the volatility of the situation on the ground, we didn\u2019t initially know which officer had been attacked.<\/p>\n

“It was only when we trawled through hundreds of hours of footage that we were able to identify that it was a West Mercia officer who had been supporting the operation on the night.<\/p>\n

“The footage showing him jolting forward was matched to other images, and we established that it was Dembler\u2019s kick that had caused it.<\/p>\n

“Although he initially denied the attack, the evidence from the officers and their body-worn cameras meant Dembler had no choice but to plead guilty.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Six other men are due to stand trial in June next year charged over the night’s violence.<\/p>\n

Dembler was released on bail ahead of his sentencing in August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dawid Dembler, 35, of Anson Road, Walsall, admitted to assaulting an emergency worker on what should have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,188,393,4884,379,12,16,15,10847],"class_list":{"0":"post-199955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-crime","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-local-hubs","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-walsall"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114715919845580692","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}