4th highest racist arrests

[broughtonblue]

We come in 4th after United, millwall and Leeds, tbh I cant think of the last time I witnessed racism at our club 

 

http://news.sky.com/story/more-manchester-united-fans-are-arrested-for-football-racism-than-any-other-club-11743651

Edited 18 June 2019 by broughtonblue

[st albans fox]

14 minutes ago, broughtonblue said:

We come in 4th after United, millwall and Leeds, tbh I cant think of the last time I witnessed racism at our club 

 

http://news.sky.com/story/more-manchester-united-fans-are-arrested-for-football-racism-than-any-other-club-11743651

I guess it depends how efficient your stewards are about enforcing the law ........ (and whether other fans are offended enough to point out perpetrators).  Fwiw, I wonder if we (and yanited) have a larger ethnic percentage of supporters in the stadium which attracts nobheads to voice their Neanderthal observations?  millwall ........ just throw them out of everything .......

[woddyuk]

As a city that has a much broader radical, cultural and social mix than lots of cities  I think our general harmony and understanding of others  is higher and our ignorance  & bigotry is lower.

Sadly though we must have our own bands of idiots in a 32k crowd somewhere.

 But I've never heard anything personally home or away from our fans.  We are more likely to "abuse" a  player because they are sh%t or because we are envious. 

 

Only time I've ever heard it at a City match was from the Millwall " fans" when they beat us 3-0. Game before Sven got sacked. 

Police had about 100 cordoned against a wall outside stadium near family stand after the game and they openly were chanting "No one likes us etc, Leicester's full of p%kis, Go home ". Several Asian people walking past with young kids were getting dogs abuse and poice did nothing at all. They realistically couldn't arrest them all and would have had a bigger public issue had they tried and they broke the cordon. So they were coralled against the wall. Police probably just wanted them gone and out the city.

So because it was a large group mob rule won and they got away with it. 

[ALC Fox]

I remember one of our own fans racially abusing Andy Impey at a home game at Filbert Street. I was a kid but shamefully I said nothing, as did everyone else in the crowd.

 

I'd hope times would have moved on by now and the crowd would almost police itself if other fans heard one of their own shouting something like that. But then I've not heard anything of that nature at the football for a long time.

 

It's sad to see us so high on that list. 14 arrests doesn't seem like a lot if you do a simple sum of 32k × 19 home games (not including the extra cup games and the odd U23s fixture which will have lower attendances)...but clearly there's a way to go and a proactive anti-racism stance is probably something the club should focus on this coming season. Also, perhaps the next Union FS tifo could have a generally inclusive/anti-racism vibe.

 

Andy Impey's reaction, by the way? He turned to the fan, gave him a thumbs-up and carried on playing. Nowadays I guess a player would feel empowered to tell the ref, tell a steward, or tell their captain to lead a walk-off, but Impey's calmness and professionalism in that situation was genuinely top class.

Edited 18 June 2019 by ALC Fox
Added Impey's reaction

[StriderHiryu]

50 minutes ago, ALC Fox said:

Nowadays I guess a player would feel empowered to tell the ref, tell a steward, or tell their captain to lead a walk-off, but Impey's calmness and professionalism in that situation was genuinely top class.

This makes it sound like telling the ref / steward of captain is a bad thing? 

 

Racism is a blight not just in football but within the the world. Abusing someone simply because of the colour of their skin or racial ethnicity is one of the worst things any human being can do and it simply has no place in modern society.

 

Whilst I admire Impey for not letting this behaviour from his own club's fans get the better of him, players should not have to put up with this sort of behaviour. Football is perhaps one of the ways that racism can slowly be reduced or eradicated over many years and I for one would have zero issue with a player making a formal complaint or even if a team walked off. There are some things that are more important than sport.

[Sol thewall Bamba]

Very surprised at that personally. We obviously have a very diverse city, I don't know whether this helps or hinders this kind of thing. But really I'm surprised as I just don't think our demographic of our support was that way inclined. Look at the others on that list, Utd, Millwall, West Ham, Boro, Leeds. All very old school, blokey fan bases home and away, surprised we were anywhere near that to be honest. Shame. 

[yorkie1999]

All that article really means is we have the 4th most efficient police force for catching racist fans. If there were no police to catch and arrest them,  they'd be no racists, according to data. 

[los dedos]

How many were away fans ?

[Nick]

There’s nothing in that to say we have a larger problem with racism than other clubs. What it might well suggest is that due to a diverse attendance, when some drunk white imbecile shouts something stupid that they are challenged by those around them which then escalates into exchange followed by arrest. In many football crowds such things get a blind eye turned. 

 

Also its its a lot easier for Police to make arrests on grounds of section 4 or 5 public order as a means to an end rather than prove racist behaviours.... 

 

Be interesting to see the stats for arrests alone by club and by offence.

[Aus Fox]

If you read the article it’s 14 arrests over 4 years, which is actually really low when you think of 32000 in the stadium week in week out.

I do wonder in a city like Leicester if we are also more willing to report those idiots who stand out. 

I would also like more information about the arrests, which games, was it one group of lads 3 years ago or is it consistently 3/4 being arrested every season?

A statistic without any more evidence is pretty useless.

[Royston.]

Booing nacho has spiked the ratios 

[Foxes1]

You look at the figures so over a 4 year period we have had 14 arrest which works out at nearly 4 per season. All of those 14 may have been in 2014 and none this season. Racism may have come down at our club in those 4 years.

[sheffield_fox]

25 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

All that article really means is we have the 4th most efficient police force for catching racist fans. If there were no police to catch and arrest them,  they'd be no racists, according to data. 

I'd like to believe that's true but, looking at the other clubs on that list, does it really strike you as a list of clubs with the most efficient police forces?

 

5 minutes ago, Foxes1 said:

You look at the figures so over a 4 year period we have had 14 arrest which works out at nearly 4 per season. All of those 14 may have been in 2014 and none this season. Racism may have come down at our club in those 4 years.

Or it may have gone up. The best thing we can do is be vigilant and report any problems to the police immediately.

[Foxes1]

Its a wonder that it isn't a lot higher the amount of s**t our French manager Claude Puel got called particularly at away games.

[woddyuk]

1 hour ago, Aus Fox said:

If you read the article it’s 14 arrests over 4 years, which is actually really low when you think of 32000 in the stadium week in week out.

I do wonder in a city like Leicester if we are also more willing to report those idiots who stand out. 

I would also like more information about the arrests, which games, was it one group of lads 3 years ago or is it consistently 3/4 being arrested every season?

A statistic without any more evidence is pretty useless.

You're right. Whilst not ignoring the issue, you do need to keep perspective. 

ManUtd "top" with 27" arrests in FOUR years!! Considering they get 75k every home game, (that's 5.7 million over four seasons league games alone) and have arguably one of the biggest away followings,  its a non story. 

 

Would be more interesting to know how many offences committed where there wasn't any arrests? 

Do clubs with high arrest figures simply have more racists, a lower tolerance to racism so therefore more arrests, or just higher numbers as pro rata to their attendances? 

 

Are these arrests purely "home" fans for the clubs mentioned, or total arrests including away fans? If the latter what's the mix ratio? 

If there were 14 arrests and 10of those were away fans that's perspective also. 

 

 

 

Edited 18 June 2019 by woddyuk

[Finnegan]

What's interesting about statistics like this is that they can be both positive and negative depending on what else is occurring in the context. 

 

You obviously don't want racism to happen at all but if it does happen, you want to know that people are reporting it and that the police are taking appropriate action. 

 

At work, we don't have target setting for anti social behaviour. We monitor it of course but you can't take a high number of reported cases only to be bad. We want to know people feel able to report it. 

 

It's possible the police in Manchester and the club at United take it more seriously and are more diligent. They're a truly global club with a lot of football tourists, there's always scores of fans from all over Europe and Asia outside the ground taking photos on a match day. I'd assume, being well aware of a very mixed demographic at their matches, the authorities there are very hot on racism. 

 

I'd also say that, whilst exposure to people from other cultures does largely reduce prejudice, it also has the reverse effect in the minority. It could be very possible that the influx of other cultures at Old Trafford have made the vast majority, on the whole, as a group, more open minded whilst at the same time giving a small, bitter minority something to be actively aggressive towards. 

 

All told, without wanting to simply defend our club at all costs, one statistic alone can be misleading. You'd need a whole basket of stats around incidents, demographics at games, arrests in general, et all to paint a clear picture. 

[ALC Fox]

2 hours ago, StriderHiryu said:

This makes it sound like telling the ref / steward of captain is a bad thing? 

 

Racism is a blight not just in football but within the the world. Abusing someone simply because of the colour of their skin or racial ethnicity is one of the worst things any human being can do and it simply has no place in modern society.

 

Whilst I admire Impey for not letting this behaviour from his own club's fans get the better of him, players should not have to put up with this sort of behaviour. Football is perhaps one of the ways that racism can slowly be reduced or eradicated over many years and I for one would have zero issue with a player making a formal complaint or even if a team walked off. There are some things that are more important than sport.

Sorry mate, I think there were some crossed wires there. I agree that telling the ref/steward and leading a walk-off is absolutely the correct thing to do.

 

In fact, I intended to highlight that actually 20 years ago players may not have felt as though they could do that, and that in those circumstances, Impey was very calm and professional and didn't lower himself by responding negatively to his abuser.

 

The racist went low, Impey went high.

 

Although things are far from perfect now, the fact that some players, in some instances, essentially don't have to suffer that abuse in silence is at least an incremental step in the right direction.

[brucey]

I've had more racism directed towards me in Leicester than in several far less diverse cities combined. I'm not sure there's a correlation, but I can see how having discrete racial groups in the same place can make it worse.

 

[Jacnah]

13 minutes ago, brucey said:

I've had more racism directed towards me in Leicester than in several far less diverse cities combined. I'm not sure there's a correlation, but I can see how having discrete racial groups in the same place can make it worse.

 

that's not good at all!

 

I don't know whether I'm surprised or not. Maybe you have a point about a consequence of multiple discrete racial groups. Thinking out loud, perhaps it has a negative impact on the extremes in making them more isolated and vocal, but Ive always 'thought' it had a positive impact on the majority

[Sol thewall Bamba]

34 minutes ago, brucey said:

I've had more racism directed towards me in Leicester than in several far less diverse cities combined. I'm not sure there's a correlation, but I can see how having discrete racial groups in the same place can make it worse.

 

Actually this is valid, the only time I've ever had another malicious said to me with regards to race was in Leicester 

 

 

[TheLittleBigMan]

Really pleasing to see objective comments rather than panic posting. I nearly checked to see I was on FT..

[ian_marshall]

I'd be intrigued to see what specifically was requested as part of the freedom of information request and the data that was actually provided.

 

Questions that automatically spring to my mind are things like, are all offences recorded in the same way across differing police forces?, what methods were used to identify arrested individuals as a supporter of a particular club?, did the request extend as far as to include both home and away fans?, does the data include European arrests? (which might skew the data as they could be automatically filed as racist by default), do arrests made at international games form part of this dataset? 

 

I'm not suggesting that racism isn't rife amongst football fans, however the fact that the article is so vague means that it comes across as click bait rather than being a well researched piece of journalism offering genuine insight into such matters. 

[dyanmark]

I'm working in Derby at the min (pride park actually) and its really  noticeable how few ethnic folk there compared to Leicester-both in the office and in the properties I go to.

Leicester is very mixed

[RumbleFox]

Interesting thread so far.  Well done FT.  X

[RumbleFox]

5 hours ago, brucey said:

I've had more racism directed towards me in Leicester than in several far less diverse cities combined. I'm not sure there's a correlation, but I can see how having discrete racial groups in the same place can make it worse.

 

That's an interesting topic.  I grew up in Burton which is almost as racially diverse as Leicester then went to uni in Leicester and never really saw any racism in either (but then again I am white so maybe didn't notice it as a young white boy/student) but moved to Scotland as a young adult and what struck me was just how white it is up here.  It feels weid and alien and I miss a more culturally/racially diverse area.  I don't even think I realised I lived in a mixed area growing up it was just what I thought everywhere was like.  Since living here I feel like I have heard more racist/small minded views than I did down south (although I may just have notced them more?) and always put it down to it being less racially diverse but a friend of mine of Pakistani descent from Glasgow says she experieces much more racism down south in more diverse areas so maybe I am wrong.  Either way it's a depressing world we live in at times.  I think we all probably know that racism in football never went away we just got better at hiding it or ignoring it and the spike recently is probably two fold..... 1) We are better at reporting/trying to crack down. 2) National and international politcal situations have made bigots braver and louder.  I am sorry to hear you still have to put up with racist abuse in 2019.  

 

X

Edited 18 June 2019 by RumbleFox