{"id":225390,"date":"2026-01-07T13:16:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T13:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/225390\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T13:16:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T13:16:16","slug":"west-midlands-police-chief-should-go-over-fan-ban-says-kemi-badenoch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/225390\/","title":{"rendered":"West Midlands Police chief should go over fan ban, says Kemi Badenoch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Board of Deputies of British Jews has called for the chief constable to be sacked, saying the force seemed to have made a decision to ban fans first and then &#8220;searched for evidence to justify it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Guildford told the Home Affairs Committee the decision &#8220;wasn&#8217;t influenced by politics&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said he stood by the accuracy of intelligence which was key to the city&#8217;s Safety Advisory Group (SAG), made up of people including police and council representatives, issuing the ban on away fans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A letter from Dutch police, seen by the BBC, appears to question evidence WMP cited about Maccabi fans&#8217; behaviour at a match in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The committee has said it will request further information from police in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Members of the SAG deemed the Europa League match &#8220;high risk&#8221; because of unrest during previous Maccabi Tel Aviv matches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The committee also heard police thought &#8220;vigilante groups&#8221; from the local community in Birmingham posed a threat to Maccabi fans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We got a lot of information or intelligence to suggest that people were going to actively seek out Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and would seek violence towards them,&#8221; Assistant Chief Constable Mike O&#8217;Hara said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Board of Deputies of British Jews has called for the chief constable to be sacked, saying the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-225390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}