PC Jon Sleigh – Q&A

Back in August during the gathering at the Trent Navigation I was informed that the police had arrived and wanted to talk. It’s not something anyone particularly wants to hear – various potential misdemeanours flashed through my head – but in truth the visit was hardly surprising. 400 + people congregated together a matter of yards from a pub full of Leeds fans at our say so was something we had briefly considered leading up to the day.

The officer I met was named PC Jon Sleigh. For those not aware PC Sleigh is the ‘Dedicated Football Officer’ for Nottingham’s two football teams and runs the @NottsPolFootball Twitter account. It’s refreshing to see Nottinghamshire Police (along with other forces across the country) try and engage supporters; providing information about upcoming games and, where necessary, explain certain things.

Following this brief conversation I enquired whether PC Sleigh would be willing to help us with a piece on policing at Forest games. As FG and as individuals we are interested with many core issues that impact on supporters and the police are involved in some of these. We therefore applied these into the Q&A you will see below. I can’t deny having occasionally be frustrated at football matches down the years with how fans have been policed and there are other long standing points that we thought would interesting to put to PC Sleigh. And naturally our next game gets a mention.

Hopefully you will find it an enjoyable read.

 

How long have you worked with the force and how long have you been involved in policing NFFC matches?

PC Sleigh:  I’ve been in the police for 29 years and worked Forest and County games for all of that time. I took on a more significant role in 1996. I was fortunate to have been sent to London and worked all of the England Euro 96 games at Wembley. I was in Trafalgar Square after England were beaten on penalties – we were busy!

Since that time I have been the Dedicated Football Officer and also the Force’s Football Banning Order officer. I’ve worked well in excess of 1000 games both here in Nottingham as well as throughout the rest of the country. I have even travelled throughout Europe as part of a British Police delegation advising on supporter behaviour for England qualifying fixtures. I attend the greatest majority of Forest home and away games. I also have certain policing responsibilities for Notts County.    

 

How important do you feel the engagement with supporters is, such as via the Twitter feed you operate?

Football is a community event and fan engagement is very important to us. Twitter is an excellent way of getting useful match day information to supporters.  I hope that most of those who follow @NottPolFootball will see that I try to answer as many questions as I can. Sometimes supporters can see no reason for a particular tactic or decision being made. Twitter gives an opportunity explain – but of course this isn’t always that easy with just 140 characters. Sometimes it’s not possible to answer all questions due to operational reasons or where an investigation is being undertaken.

 

Twitter can be a brilliant forum to spread information and to discuss and debate but it also has its pitfalls – is it sometimes a frustrating task?

I genuinely don’t get frustrated as I am quite lucky as I feel that nearly all of the interaction is positive.

 

What are the Notts Police views on Forza Garibaldi? Are we a hinderance in any way?

It’s good that we recently met up for the Leeds game (a game best forgotten!) as I was aware of your existence but didn’t really have a great understanding of what you were looking to achieve. I’m sure that we will have a good ‘working’ relationship and whilst we don’t want to be intrusive, it is beneficial to be aware of your events that are likely to see many 100’s turn up for. This is equally important for both home and away games. Rest assured we don’t regard you as a hinderance!

 

We (FG) occasionally promote mass supporter meets away from the away from home. Are these types of gatherings viewed with frustration? Especially when your Twitter feed will direct fans to recommended away pubs. A regular issue for many of us is the designated away pubs are pretty dire!

It’s not a problem if you don’t want to use a particular place that we recommend. The fact is they are purely an option for you as there are places that Forest will visit where pubs/bars have a very strict ‘home’ supporters only policy. I can understand your concerns if the premises is not to your liking, but all I can do is pass on the information from my counterparts from the police area where the game is to be played.

For Forest ‘home’ games we advise fans to use the Sports Bar at Meadow Lane, which becomes increasingly popular year on year as travelling fans seem to relish being together in large numbers and creating their own unique atmosphere. My understanding is that for the majority of your ‘away days’ you tend to make your own arrangements, and you have made some fine choices in the past!  All I would ask is that if you are expecting a large crowd at a particular premises the manager is made aware well in advance (I know you do) and that you just let me know so that I can pass it on to the local police for their information. I don’t think we were intrusive at QPR or Brentford? It’s likely that for future events, either myself or a colleague will drop in and see you so that we can be serenaded with the ‘Z cars’ theme tune! 

 

How many officers are typically deployed for a Forest home game and how much does this increase for a game with a bigger risk such as Derby?

Each game is carefully assessed with many factors taken into consideration, such as time and date of kick-off, opposition, recent fan behaviour, importance of the game, how supporters will travel i.e. large numbers by rail or large number of coaches, as well as having some consideration to previous meetings of the two clubs and of course any specific intelligence relating to a game. This is not an exhaustive list but gives you some idea. Based on these factors, typically there will be 1 or 2 games a season where there will be NO POLICE at the ground, but the greatest majority of games will be assessed as ‘low’ or ‘medium risk’, which will see a more of a police response. Just one game will be an ‘Increased Risk’ this season – I’ll leave you guessing! 

 I often receive feedback about there being no or limited visible police presence at a game. The reality is that to have officers within the ground and the immediate vicinity as well as spread out along key areas such as Radcliffe Road, Lady Bay Bridge and all the way to the train station and canal side, would take huge numbers of officers. Their positioning is based on where the greatest risk is and that can change from game to game and even from minute to minute.  

 

With a visit to Derby on the horizon is there a significant increase in your workload leading up to the fixture? In certain local derbies away fans have has strict measures enforced on them such as coach convoys being the only way to reach the away end – has this ever been considered in the Forest / Derby games?

The workload generally doesn’t increase that much for the Derby away game other than attending a couple of planning meetings with the Derbyshire Police. Identifying how fans are travelling and likely issues this may present is very important and I’m fortunate to have an excellent relationship (I think!) with all the local coach companies as well as those who organise/book the coaches.

I also keep regularly contact with officers from the British Transport Police as the train is very well used on ‘Derby’ day. Of course I also speak with Nottingham Forest in the run up to the game. I’m assuming that you refer to what are commonly termed ‘Bubble matches’. The simple answer is NO – to the best of my knowledge (in 20+ years) we have never considered them.

 

Has football violence involving Forest reduced in the last ten years? Has it changed / developed in any way?

It has changed to some extent as we don’t have anywhere near the numbers of troublesome supporters as we did when I first started this role. They would make significant attempts to organise disorder with their likeminded rivals. However, my view and those of reformed problematic supporters, is that the introduction of Football Banning Orders has been instrumental in addressing that issue.

That is not to say that we don’t still have problematic groups – we do, and if you follow the local news reports you’ll be aware that from time to time there will be arranged fights involving people who are very well known to us. Rest assured these are very rare events and normally take place well away from the football grounds, which is why most fans won’t witness it and why most fans believe it’s no longer an issue.  

We often concentrate a lot of our match day efforts on these groups so as to make sure they don’t come together for confrontation, and of course that can be another reason why there will be occasions when officers unfortunately have to be removed from certain positions around the ground to deal with these elements.  I have seen an increase in anti-social behaviour over the years, but this tends not to be from one specific group, rather it’s more likely to be as a result of individuals drinking to excess and acting in an anti-social manner.  There are certain games where this is far more prevalent than others and can manifest itself in verbal disputes with police and stewards and sometimes results in physical confrontation.

There are those who will also look to engage rival supporters in a verbal exchange suggesting that it’s only ‘banter’. But there is a fine line between acceptable ‘banter’ and what can be perceived as vitriolic abuse, which can sometimes incite a placid situation into something far more volatile that requires police intervention.

 

Are you able to tell us your most difficult day policing a football match?

Having worked over a 1000 matches, there have been a few! It is normally the games where you least expect it that have probably caused the most issues and perhaps we didn’t have the necessary resources to deal with the problem. I would not want to name those games for fear of giving a minority some notoriety! I was fortunate enough to be on the British Police delegation working in Marseille for the World Cup in 1998. Now that was difficult!

 

In general football fans are well behaved and are only interested in following their club perhaps alongside a day on the beer. Are tactics such as rounding up fans, controlling movement and dry trains fair on the majority of supporters?

We would only look to ‘round up fans’ either because they were identified as being a significant risk to causing disorder or if they were being problematic and involved in high levels of anti-social behaviour. These events are rare here in Nottingham. If you’re referring to when we play Derby and have large numbers being escorted by police to and from the train station, this is because large numbers of fans are happy to be escorted and join the queue! Only a very small minority are there because we want them to be. I have never had any involvement with ‘dry trains’ so cannot really comment.

 

How much of a role do the police have in changing kick-off times? It is a source of great frustration when highly anticipated games are shifted to an early kick-off or to a Sunday. Clearly TV broadcasters are responsible for some of these alterations but not all. How does the process work?

This season is a good example I suppose (some would say a bad example), as there has been some movement of kick-off times but this has been due to a clash of fixtures when Forest played Millwall and there was the T20 at Trent Bridge. Due to the Football league’s scheduling Forest were also to play Cardiff on the same day as County play Colchester (it is Forest’s turn to move their fixture).

The other changes have been as a result of the TV companies wanting to screen the game, which happens every weekend up and down the country. There’s normally a ‘screened’ game before and after the traditional 3pm KO, which I’m sure gives them the highest possible viewing numbers and most revenue. I don’t see anything changing with this in the future. The only game where the police will have some say in changing the kick-off time is for Derby, and that decision is made jointly with Nottingham Forest.

 

A long standing desire amongst some Forest supporters has been for away fans to be relocated out of the Lower Bridgford entirely to another part of the stadium. Has it ever been discussed with the police and would the police have any concerns if this was raised?

I’m not aware of any such discussion taking place, but I suppose any concerns would depend on where the away fans were to be placed and what their allocation was. Sorry but I wouldn’t want to speculate any further.

 

Being inside the City Ground on a matchday what do you make of the atmosphere at home games?

As a teenager I was fortunate enough to have started watching Forest in the late 70’s and saw all the European home games, including the 3-3 draw with Cologne in front of a 44,000 gate. What a night and what an atmosphere.

It would be great if every game had a similar atmosphere to that night, and also when Psycho walked out for the opening game of the season against Blackpool in 2014. That was phenomenal and a moment that stands out amongst many great experiences within the last 29 years of policing football.   

 

A regular source of debate on the Notts Police Twitter feed is concerning the use of pyrotechnics. They are prohibited by law in British football stadiums and, of course, that law is not written by the Nottinghamshire Constabulary but they are seemingly widely accepted in countries outside of the UK. Are you able to elaborate as to why this is?

They are certainly a spectacle abroad and I’d like to thank those who keep sending me videos of stadiums that appear well lit via my Twitter account! 

It appears very much as if pyros are part of an accepted football culture in many European countries and there is an element of support here in the UK trying to copy that. The reality is though, it is not part of our culture and the law makers have made it very clear that they are not welcome. Those using them are more often than not identified and subsequently prosecuted.

Only last weekend a fan had to receive medical attention when they had breathing difficulties after a device was set off in the ground. There were 7 supporters of the three local teams who were given 3 year football banning orders last season for possession/setting off a device.

Whether supporters feel 3 years is proportionate or necessary is to some extent irrelevant as the courts issue the orders and they feel they are both, and that is not likely to change for the foreseeable future.

 

Finally – where do you predict Forest will finish in the league this season?

These questions get harder!

There have been a number of significant changes at the club over the summer, which you’ll be well aware of. Lots of movement ‘behind the scenes’ and I do believe that as a fan there is a lot be really optimistic about for the future.  But I’d be happy with mid table by the end of the season (ecstatic if they were top!) and something positive to build on next season. I couldn’t cope with another ‘final day drama’ like last season!

PS – A big ‘shout’ for Notts County –  I genuinely do hope they win the league.

 

Many thanks to PC Sleigh for his time.