It is quite the timeline. A series of key, confusing, misleading, inaccurate moments, spanning about five months. All to obfuscate the decision by West Midlands Police (WMP) to ban Israeli football fans from their match at Villa Park.<\/p>\n
The ban, we were told to begin with, was the result of apparent intelligence showing that Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters have unique form for violent hooliganism. Now \u2013 with more and more reporting \u2013 it is clear that was nothing more than an embarrassing attempt at an excuse.<\/p>\n
The police drew up false evidence<\/a> to retrospectively justify their Israeli fan ban, yet they will not own up to this.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today the Chief Constable is being recalled<\/a> to the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) after his evidence fell apart following his first appearance. Hopefully he will be held to account for the mess that has unfurled \u2013 and it is a mess.<\/p>\n Lets begin with a meeting on 7th October (timing, right?) where WMP privately told a Safety Advisory Group (SAG) of their \u201cplanning assumption\u201d to ban Israeli fans. This was despite \u2013 newly released, unredacted minutes reveal \u2013 the police representative\u2019s verdict being \u201cin absence of intelligence\u201d. Basing the preference on \u201cconversations with piers [sic]\u201d and their \u201cprofessional judgment\u201d.<\/p>\n Just two days later, an officer from Birmingham city council wrote to WMP of needing \u201ca more clear rationale\u201d to back the position they had already decided to take. Never mind having evidence inform the decision, they thought it best to do the other way around.<\/p>\n A week went by and apparently \u201csignificant intelligence\u201d then existed to justify the ban, according to the police \u2013 focusing on the disorder that broke out when Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters attended a game in Amsterdam the year before. WMP in their explanations refer back to a meeting with Dutch police on October 1st<\/a>\u2026 that would be before the meeting on October 7th that pointed to an \u201cabsence\u201d of that very intelligence.<\/p>\n And there is another particularly important problem: the Dutch police say what West Midlands Police have claimed is untrue or misleading<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Chief Constable Craig Guildford stood by the allegations at his first HASC appearance after WMP claimed that Israelis \u201crandomly\u201d threw innocent civilians into canals and that hundreds of fans \u201clinked\u201d to the IDF attacked \u201cMuslim communities\u201d in Amsterdam, requiring the deployment of 5,000 Dutch officers (it was 1,200).<\/p>\n What else has been revealed is that between October 7, when the first safety group meeting took place, and the final meeting on October 23 confirming the decision, police downgraded the threat it said Israeli fans faced (\u201chigh\u201d to \u201cmedium\u201d) and upgraded the threat to the Muslim community (\u201cmedium\u201d to \u201chigh\u201d). The city\u2019s 1,600 Jews, initially said to face a \u201cmedium threat\u201d, did not appear in their final analysis at all.<\/p>\n West Midlands Police ended up having to apologise to the Jewish community<\/a> for misrepresenting them at the HASC by saying that local Jews were consulted on the decision and that they backed the ban. No Jewish community members had told police they supported the ban and sources within the local Jewish community say the only formal meeting took place after the decision had already been made.<\/p>\n Instead you had two Birmingham city councillors, who had already campaigned to ban Israeli teams from international sporting competitions, speak at the SAG meetings about how: \u201cThe community want it stopped.\u201d They were able to air this ahead of any decision making despite their conflict of interest.<\/p>\n And instead WMP consulted mosques that had hosted anti-Semitic preachers before banning<\/a> the Israeli fans.<\/p>\n One thing WMP won\u2019t reveal is the details of their conversations with local MP Ayoub Khan who demanded the match be cancelled on the basis that Aston, in Birmingham, is a \u201cpredominantly Muslim community\u201d. We know the meeting happened between the police and the \u2018Gaza-independent\u2019 but zero details.<\/p>\n If it was just about an international issue in and Israeli fan ban, it would be bad enough: WMP exaggerated international statistics and ignored UEFA\u2019s advice<\/a> to go ahead with banning the Israeli fans.<\/p>\n But it is bigger than that. It speaks to the relationships between the police and the communities they work within, a backwards decision making that puts evidence last, and the erasure of the Jewish community both in banning Israeli fans and removing the threat level to the Jewish community from their reports, preferring instead to make up claims they supported the ban.<\/p>\n Lord Walney, the Government\u2019s former anti-extremism tsar, said WMP\u2019s actions set \u201ca very dangerous precedent\u201d. Lord Austin, the former Labour MP, said the force has been \u201crepeatedly caught lying\u201d. Tory MP Nick Timothy, a former Home Office advisor, said \u201cpolice fitted the evidence\u201d. It seems they are all right.<\/p>\n Do we want our policing to take place this way? Retrospectively and at the behest of the \u2018right\u2019 community groups that they choose to consult ahead of a decision, erasing another.<\/p>\n