During the 2022 to 2023 season there were 682 new banning orders issued, an increase of 32% from the previous season. But what are the police doing to combat these issues?
Buzz news spoke to dedicated football officer for Dorset, Simon Beis to find out what’s being done.
The process starts before the season even begins.
Beis says:
“In terms of a match day, Bournemouth for example get the fixtures six weeks before the season and we discuss what fixtures will need a more enhanced level of policing.”
However, this only plans for football fans as a group, the next stage is to meet the individual football fans at their level.
“We regularly communicate with our fans on a match day in a neighbourhood policing style” Beis followed on.
Beis believed that these policing methods can be very effective and go along way to creating long lasting positive relationships with match going fans.
He did note that when it comes to discrimination from fans “the downside is that sometimes we don’t hear about it until three days after the match.” Meaning that they won’t be able to deal with incidents at the time of the match.
A massive component of dealing with, racism in particular, at football matches is the Kick it out campaign.
“[it] is a reporting line and they can report on a match day that goes to the central kick it out office that is then shared with the football club at Bournemouth and we work together to identify who that is.”
All of these are methods that have proven to be effective at dealing with discrimination but with reports of these incidents still increasing, is enough being done?
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