#4 Blue lights, red shirts: How we police a Nottingham Forest match

[Intro voice over] – Last year, football fans pass through the turnstiles in Nottinghamshire more than a million times.

That's continued this season, with the county welcoming supporters from across the country and Europe for the first time in 30 years.

In this episode, we find out what it really takes to police a Nottingham Forest matchday.

[Music]

[Host] – Hello and welcome to The Interview Room, Nottinghamshire Police's brand new podcast. Today's episode we are focusing on how we police football matches. So, on that note, we're joined today by PC Simon Travell, our dedicated football officer who covers Nottingham Forest.

So, how are you Simon, you okay today?

[PC Travell] – Yes, good thank you. Thank you for inviting me on.

[Host] – No problem at all. I'll be honest, as a Forest fan myself, the idea of getting to go to Forest home and away for free sounds brilliant to be honest, but I imagine working it's a bit different.

Do you find it a bit of a daunting experience policing in those kinds of environments though, because I imagine it can get a bit hostile?

[PC Travell] Sometimes it can feel daunting, I'll be honest. Obviously, we have all our training that we do that prepares you for that kind of a role. Doing it so long, I've been 23 years in the police now, much of that being public order policing, 18 years doing football. Started out with Mansfield Town, progressed through the career and ended up at Nottingham Forest.

It can feel intimidating but you have to remember that the passion that is there, it's mainly that fans are really passionate fans. They want to enjoy themselves. They want to shout at the team. They want to cheer them on. They want to create an atmosphere that's intimidating for the opposition at times, and that isn't always aimed towards police and you have to remember that you are there to facilitate them enjoying the day in a safe manner without committing any crimes or anything, so they can all go home and have a really good day at the football.

[Host] – How many years have you been covering Forest now?

[PC Travell] – So, I took over the role in 2017, 2018/19 was my first season. So, in the eighth season now.

[Host] – You must be a Forest fan by now, if you weren't already?

[PC Travell] – Yeah, you do get drawn in. I will admit that, yes. I didn't grow up on football; I grew up on rugby. But you do get drawn in when fans are having a good time, which they do when they’re winning, the promotion season was fantastic. You see the fans that you see week in week out having a great time, going home happy having just seen the team win and that's what they go for isn't it? That good time and when you see the team do well it is a lot easier as well as a police officer.

[Host] – You say rugby, don't tell me you're a Leicester Tigers fan?

[PC Travell] – Yes, it was I’m afraid, yeah.

[Host] – Oh that’s very controversial. Controversial start to the podcast there.

[PC Travell] – So, season card holder at Leicester Tigers for a good few years before I ended up in public order policing. So weekends are football now, not rugby.

[Host] – Yeah, I can imagine. You must be like a well-known face though around the fans now that obviously follow Forest home and away? Buildings up those relationships, I guess.

[PC Travell] – Yes, it does help when people recognise you, people know your name, call you by your first name. It's a lot more personable.

[Host] – That must be a bit strange.

[PC Travell] – Yes, so we've even had things like ‘that's the guy off X’ from the profile picture on there. It does help, as cringey as it is, it does help when people are using your name and coming up to you and actively asking for you. Sometimes in situations that they want the right answer, sometimes they want to get their answer and they'll be asking for Simon.

But it does help in general. Away from home it gives commanders confidence. If they're hosting you and they want you to give an assessment of your fans, if your fans are calling you by name, sometimes it may feel that you're too close to the fans, but I keep that professional boundary there. It gives me a chance to give a full assessment of the group that I’m with, the commanders that I'm with and my colleagues will know that I'm known to the fans and I know the fan base itself.

So, it really does help being recognised when you're out there.

[Host] – I suppose you’ve got to build that trust and confidence as well. I know that having looked on the X account, you put stuff out before games, you know, places to meet up, pubs to stop at and little tips and stuff like that. How many followers you up to on the X account now?

[PC Travell] – Just over 10,000.

[Host] – Have we got a target? Are we aiming to get more than Notts Police’s one?

[PC Travell] – Well it was 3,000 when I took over.

[Host] – Oh well brilliant, not to brag.

[PC Travell] – I’m a long way off.

[Host] – Obviously one of the main reasons we've got you on today is, obviously people that go to the games, people that don't, they won't see all the work that goes into policing on a matchday. Are you able to give us a quick insight into some of your role, I suppose?

[PC Travell] – Yeah, so there's two different areas. There's home and away, slightly different. A home match, our planning phase will start from four weeks out. We'll have an idea from the start of the season when we have the fixture list come out on fixture day as to what games we might be looking at as high risk, medium or low risk. Four weeks out though, we’ll receive an assessment from my counterpart, the dedicated football officer for the visiting team that's coming to Nottingham.

In that assessment, they'll tell us how fans have been behaving last season, how they've been behaving this season, what kind of peculiarities they have. How they travel, whether they usually travel on coaches or by train. We work with partner agencies such as BTP (British Transport Police) and East Midlands Railway to ensure that they know the amount of fans that will be coming through their station.

We work with licensed premises to make sure that they know the amount of fans that will be there and sort of what timings they'll be arriving in Nottingham as well. We will have several meetings with the club as well to see what their security arrangements are, what their understanding is of the game, how they see it, usually the risk factors will match.

Sometimes they'll have information that we don't have and vice versa. So, we do have an information sharing agreement with Nottingham Forest and the other clubs as well in Nottinghamshire. So, bringing all that together gives us a picture of what the risk will look like, which helps with staffing.

So, the commanders will listen to the information and intelligence. They'll then look at what staffing we're going to put into the game, whether that be how many officers on the outside of the stadium, in the city before the game, to ensure that people are arriving and getting to the ground safely, but also, what request is going to come from the club as to what they’re having to invest in terms of their stewarding.

Our officers working inside the stadium alongside their stewards and also their security, SIA staff that they have on as well.

[Host] – So it's a lot of spinning plates basically. So, one of the things I'm getting from what you said there, is your relationship I suppose and our relationship as a force with the club, so Forest, is very important to this.

[PC Travell] – Yeah, there's a great relationship. There's a lot of trust between both parties. Obviously, Nottingham Forest have to invest a lot of money into keeping people safe, as they should. We support that with the serials on the outside of the stadium in the city areas, building up the picture, liaising with the club on matchday, letting them know if we've had any problems, where fans are, if they're likely to be moving off from the premises and moving nearer towards the ground.

They invest in police inside the ground, they will have the police arrive usually midday, something like that, brief at the ground, and then they'll wait for the fans arriving and engaging with fans as they arrive inside the stadium and linking in with the security operation of the club.

[Host] – Where will you typically be on a matchday? So, let's say a home match. Where will you be based? I don’t want more people to recognise you, but where are you likely to be based?

[PC Travell] – So, usually I will host my counterpart. So, if it's from say Arsenal, the DFO (Dedicated Football Officer) from Arsenal will work alongside me, meeting their fans off the trains as they’re coming in. Also speaking to our fans that might be coming on trains, guiding the away fans to the appropriate premises, which is normally The Nest near Notts County, we’ll be in and around that area.

About an hour before kick-off we'll try and get up to the turnstiles to see fans arriving there, making sure the coaches are arriving in good time. Very often you'll get coaches arriving quite late to the ground having got lost on the way or something like that, and just welcoming the fans as they come into the ground to make sure they know exactly where they're going.

[Host] – How about – well, not on kick off – but when the game is going on?

[PC Travell] – So, normally in the Lower Bridgford, behind the away fans there's an area set aside from the club, a secure area, that we can position ourselves in. It's got a good view of the away fans, it’s got a good view across the stadium of the different divides between the two sets of fans and, also we have a vantage point on the Main Stand in the gantry area where we can put our evidence gathering team if they're using video cameras or anything like that to record behaviour of certain sets of fans if we do anticipate any problems.

[Host] – Obviously, just on the final point there, in terms of any issues and problems, I can imagine trying to police a matchday is made a lot more challenging for yourselves when you know people have too much to drink or they take class A drugs like cocaine. Is that one of the issues that you guys face the most challenge in I suppose?

[PC Travell] – We do see that, there were changes recently – two seasons now after the EUROs in London – the reports that came out of that introduced the legislation which fitted to football banning orders being obtained in the event that someone's caught with class A drugs coming into a stadium.

There's a whole other debate about drugs. But first hand, I've seen how people behave differently when they have taken class A drugs, especially if it's coupled with alcohol. Their behaviour deteriorates, they become a lot more aggressive in their nature in general.

In terms of people drinking too much, there is an offense of entering a stadium whilst drunk. So, people don't always realise you can get arrested for that. So, it's about engagement really, we don't arrest the first person that's drunk and I'm under no illusions that people have a drink before they come to the stadium, but it’s when their behaviour stands out particularly, we will engage with them, we’ll advise them, sometimes we might say, go and get yourself a coffee or something to eat and come back to me in half an hour to an hour's time and generally people do accept that advice.

Some are a little bit more argumentative and we have to have the police officers there for that element, but the vast majority are law abiding citizens that are coming to a match just to enjoy it. The minority that do ruin it at times are becoming even more of a minority, especially in the Premier League.

[Host] – Are you finding that then?

[PC Travell] – Yeah, the tickets are more expensive for a start. The investment that people make in coming to a Premier League match, the sanctions that they face if they do misbehave by the club, the club will have a sanctions policy. They are very responsible in terms of taking their own action as well.

And in general, if you're a Premier League club, there's another ten people who want your ticket next week. Whereas in the lower leagues you do see some deterioration of behaviours, especially if people are buying tickets without an account, some anonymity there that we don't know who they are at times. But everyone who's coming into Nottingham Forest will usually have an account and the tickets bought in their name.

[Host] – So in terms of trouble then, just actually rewinding just on what we were just saying, back in time to when Forest weren't in the Premier League. One incident and match that will immediately come to mind for maybe people that don’t even support football will be the cup game against Leicester a few seasons back, when there was a few issues in the city and obviously in the game.

How challenging was that day for you and your team if you remember?

[PC Travell] – Yeah, so it’s regarded as a derby game, especially by the Leicester fans who don't really have a derby side. Immediately to mind, it would be Forest vs Derby being the big game for both sets of fans, Derby County and Forest fans. I'm quite pleased though, that we have to go all the way back to that game because since then we've had very little in terms of disorder.

It was a minority of people who came there, the Leicester risk element of the fan base that came, they were organised, they went into the city, evaded the police at the train station by using taxis rather than the trains. There was a fairly large investigation and numerous banning orders were issued to Leicester fans after that.

We didn't have any Forest fans arrested or given football banning orders I'm pleased to say.

[Host] – Positive result, I suppose?

[PC Travell] – Yeah, very positive. So, we worked closely with the club. If it's a court banning order, so a banning order issued by the courts on conviction or whether it's a sanction placed on by the club we work closely with, all the clubs, who visit and, obviously Nottingham Forest as well to issue those sanctions.

[Host] – Just listening to some of your answers, you've talked about them being in the vast minority and a lot of people not wanting to cause any trouble and just enjoy the football, it seems to me, you feel that classic stereotype of all football fans being hooligans and causing trouble is a bit wide of the mark, then. Would that be accurate?

[PC Travell] - It is, yeah. I'm pleased to say with Nottingham Forest fans, when we've been in UEFA meetings away from home, the reports from UEFA have all been positive about the interactions that they've seen with Nottingham Forest fans, the behaviour away from home. The reports that we've had when we were out in Braga, Nottingham Forest fans were reporting to us that some of the local people were trying to sell them drugs.

They reported that to us and we were able to report that in to the police, because they don't want to be approached all the time and harassed by people who are trying to sell drugs and, you know, for them to call it out was a big statement, really. And that went a long way with the authorities when they hear that football fans are telling them that they're being harassed by a local drug dealer and there was a positive result on that that an arrest was made of that individual.

[Host] – I'm not going to put you on the spot. Get my fingers out and do the maths, eight years, how many games is that? And ask how many matches you've covered over the years, but there must have been a few highlights that immediately spring to mind, obviously, that you policed and just the experience of covering, I suppose?

[PC Travell] – The Forest vs Derby games were always a favourite of mine back in the Championship. The work that goes into that, we also did a lot of engagement with Derby County fans. We went over to the Derby County stadium, met with their fan groups before they came to Nottingham to find out what they thought of our policing operation, how they thought they were treated and get their feedback really, which goes back into our planning. So, a lot of work there.

I also cover England, so I did the England final in Berlin, the EUROs.

[Host] – Not the result we wanted unfortunately.

[PC Travell] – Not the result we wanted but it was a fantastic day. The whole build up to that was, unbelievable. The standout one though would have to be the promotion at Wembley.

So, Championship into Premier League with Forest. Unbelievable to see, again the emotion of people who had followed Forest for years, 23 years away from the Premier League and then they’re promoted at Wembley.

[Host] – Hugging strangers and…

[PC Travell] – Yes, yeah.

[Host] – Did you have anyone hug you? Any Forest fans?

[PC Travell] – Yes, plenty, yeah. Sometimes people forget themselves and they’re jumping up and down with a police officer at the side of them. But, yeah it was a fantastic day and really does live long in the memories.

[Host] – Obviously that day goes hand in hand with the following day when obviously we all come back from London to Nottingham, Old Market Square. What was that day like because yeah, just pure euphoria for a lot of people, I suppose? Must have been a lot easier to police when you're in that environment?

[PC Travell] – It was. So, I travelled back that morning and got changed in the car and dropped off in the city centre and made my way to the council building and the standout thing for me that day was the emotion of the staff at Nottingham Forest. The people had worked hard behind the scenes over the years actually finally see them in the Premier League, the work that they’d put in, the investment that the ownership had put in as well, it was great to see the ownership there as well and celebrating what they'd worked hard for.

But to see the vast crowd across the market square, it was unbelievable.

[Host] – Think you mentioned the X account earlier? I'm pretty sure, correct me if I'm wrong, the picture is yourself on the gantry?

[PC Travell] – It is, yeah.

[Host] – So that must have been good to be able to get up there?

[PC Travell] – It was, yeah. It was good to see.

[Host] – Did you get your hands on the trophy by any chance?

[PC Travell] – No I didn’t, no.

[Host] – Oh, unfortunate. Obviously, we're talking a few years ago now. Since then, we've had a few new memories, this season Forest obviously returning to Europe. How has it been following Forest across the continent? I imagine the match in Turkey versus Fenerbahce must have been a special atmosphere and experience?

[PC Travell] – It was, there's a lot of misconceptions sometimes when you go abroad. Again, the stereotypical impression that the host police may have of English hooligans coming. A lot of my reports detail how well behaved Forest fans are going to be, what style of policing they're used to, an engagement style.

Overseas police may be that they stand off a little bit more, they’re sat in vans, they're not talking to the fans and our fans are used to knowing what's going off because they've spoken to the police, a no surprises approach where we’re able to update what’s happening, the general feel of the atmosphere of the day we can feed back, and it is about trying to get that across.

The message across to the host police force about your fans, how they’re feeling, what the behaviours like, but I'm lucky enough that the support network around me, Forza Garibaldi, they’re a massive help, the work that they've done, putting out the fan guides so that people know what to expect.

[Host] – They’re the fan support group aren’t they?

[PC Travell] – Yeah, so the security visits that I've done in the past, I've sent the photographs across, send the details across to Matt at Forza who does the guides and he’s included all of the information, their own opinions, they've spoken to fans that have been. So, for example, bringing it back to Fenerbahce, the general media impression of the Aston Villa fans going to Fenerbahce was that they were put inside the ground three or four hours before kick-off.

They were placed on busses that hadn’t got toilets. Nothing to eat or drink. When they got up to the ground, how they were treated. But actually, Forza made contact with Aston Villa fans and spoke to the people who hadn't ran into the press about their experience who said, actually, if you know what you're getting into, you know what you're signing up for and make your own preparation, your own plans, the day went really smoothly.

40 coaches took the fans up from the market square at quarter to five. They arrived at the ground, yes in good time, three hours before kick-off, but by the time the search regime had done and everyone was inside, the teams were already arriving. Nottingham Forest came out in their suits to applaud the fans and thank them.

Then they obviously got changed, then the warm up phase begins, by which time there's home fans in there as well. So they're not there in a stadium empty on their own three hours before, it was a general slow build up, which our fans obviously aren't used to. But it was clear as well that with the escort of the coaches up to the ground, that route, had it not been escorted through on closed roads, it would have taken about two hours to get from the Sultanahmet Square up to the stadium and in terms of the operation itself, getting the fans in, most of the fans, if not all, were saying how good it was.

[Host] – Well, that's good to hear obviously that there was no issues and I take it there hasn't been any issues with the games at the City Ground, so the away fans coming? I know before the season started a lot of people in the area maybe that don't support football were worried these European football ultras coming to town are going to cause all sorts of problems. What's it actually been like?

[PC Travell] – So, our experience has been that the ultras are passionate fans, very passionate fans. They've not wanted to be involved in disorder, they've arrived and complied with our requests, they've gone to The Nest, that's 1,200 capacity. So, they've collected their tickets, an operation that we've done is that they have to collect their tickets in country. So they don't travel with their ticket, they have to present a voucher at The Nest, that's where they get their ticket from.

That draws people into that area and it's a really good venue. So, it's a chance for us to engage with them again, ensuring the communication’s there. We’ve had officers, either from our own force or from visiting forces, who have those language skills. We've used people on mutual aid, in order to speak to the Malmo fans. Thankfully, we had two of our own officers, ‘Kiki’ and Sergeant Mark Westlake, that were able to speak Portuguese.

[Host] – Oh were they? That’s really interesting.

[PC Travell] – Yeah, so that went done really well for our own engagement purposes. We have Katalin Kiss who is an Hungarian national who joined the police, she's been here five years, she was able to speak Hungarian to the Ferencvaros fans and she really enjoyed the day. They couldn't believe that they’d got an Hungarian, fellow Hungarian national in a English police uniform.

[Host] – I guess that immediately breaks the barriers down?

[PC Travell] – It does, and for them to be told in their own language what is happening. We used signage that was translated prior to the match into Hungarian, asking them to follow the directions, to slow down, wait here etc., because it can be frustrating when you've walked from The Nest over to the stadium and then you’re asked to wait yet again as people are being pulsed through in 100s at a time so the turnstiles don't get over run, so that we can ensure that the loading of the stadium is as safe as possible.

[Host] – So, obviously circling back to the start, we quickly established that you're actually a rugby fan over football. Is that the dream really policing a rugby match?

[PC Travell] – I don't think we police rugby matches, it's a different crowd altogether. I will stick to football on that one, the passion of football fans is amazing. Yes, there are problems. But again, the vast majority going to football enjoy themselves and it's a great day and I'm honoured to have the role really and really enjoy what I do.

[Host] – Oh, brilliant. Well, here's hoping for a positive end to the season for Forest both on and off the pitch. Thank you for your time, Simon. It's really appreciated.

[PC Travell] – Thank you.

[Host] – Right, that's it for this episode. Don't worry though, we'll have plenty more coming out in the months ahead. So, keep an eye out for our Spotify and YouTube accounts where new episodes will be dropping every month. See you next time.