No I haven't missed the point. I'm sure there's plenty of other examples out there the journalist could have used too. My point is that if you behave yourself and don't break the law, you won't have any issues in the first place. Yes you'll probably get searched at some point and most of us are often inconvenienced caught up in police escorts around back streets or kept behind after games, many times. 99% of those people are never looking for trouble, but there's always a few idiots who are or who will join in if it comes to them. That's the nature of being a football fan unfortunately, you don't get all that at rugby or cricket. They may seem like strong measures but I personally don't have a problem with it, I can see why it's necessary and the only people to blame for it all are that extreme minority who use football as an excuse to act stupid/be violent.

It just surprises me how much people moan about it all the time, like it's not done for a reason. Be in the wrong place at the wrong time or try and resist in Europe and there's fair chance the Police will just beat the crap out of you. Dozens have been shot dead during protesting/disorder in the Ukraine recently, and I bet they weren't waiting to see if they were one of the ones who threw a brick first. I'm just saying it's not ideal but the way football is policed in the UK is as fair as it can be, with the priority having to be just preventing the trouble from starting in the first place.

You may feel football fans are dealt with too harshly in the justice system, but my viewpoint is, don't get yourself arrested in the first place. And if you' feel you're wrongly arrested, there's just no way you will be convicted for an offence you haven't committed, because they'll be no evidence to prove you DID 'throw that bottle/push that steward', you'd like to think.

I think you need to read the article.
Two examples from memory (cr@p memory even though I only read it 10 minutes ago):

1. Boro fan banned from travelling to SA for the World Cup, and when the bloke fought it and it got to court, it turns out their evidence that he was dodgy was footage of him leaving a pub which had some boro hooligans in it, and footage of him in a minibus in which another passenger had a cut on his face (no knowledge of hos he came about the cut, could have fallen over!)
2. 14 year old kid whisked off to a closed night club to be searched while the adult he was with was in the bog - so basically a minor taken off for two hours for no good reason.

It's actually quite a shocking read - I've been going to football for over 35 years and not had a bad experience with the OB, but some of those are very dodgy indeed, and doesn't involve undesirable characters. For arguments' sake, I used to drink in the Portmanor before games, and now the HF apparently drink there, and the OB clearly don't like them - does that now mean I can get banned from travelling because they've got my boyish good looks emerging from a pub they consider to be a hive of 'risk' supporters?

As someone who has worked in and around the CJS system for a good many years, I have to say that you are wrong in your (naive) assumption that a wrongful arrest leads to acquittal at court. Don't confuse evidence with the truth as there are many ways of obtaining and producing evidence before a court, not all of them lawful.

"Deviance is a freedom enjoyed in a city of lightly engaged strangers"

As someone who has ALSO worked in and around the CJS for a good many years, I also have to say that I am not NOT wrong in my NOT naive, but informed OPINION (not 'assumption') that somebody wrongly arrested will get acquitted at court. Of course there are exceptions, but without CCTV, forensic evidence, independent witnesses etc it's highly unlikely the CPS will even decide to charge that person with the offence in the first place, let alone convince a jury that you committed the crime at court. Perhaps we can agree to disagree on that one.

''The case went to court, but was thrown out. It was thrown out because Culvin, an experienced hand at dealing with these situations, had asked a fellow fan to film his encounter with the police on his phone before he approached them. And that film showed that Culvin categorically did not assault the police officer. Solicitor Melanie Cooke, who represented Culvin, says: “Once the CPS had reviewed the case in light of the defence representations and after viewing a DVD of the camera phone footage, the criminal proceedings were immediately discontinued”.

Quite clearly reading the paragraph above it was only because he had the foresight to get a friend to video that he wasn't prosecuted. The jury would have convicted purely on the Officers statement that they had been assaulted because a lot of people have the same view as yourself, you must have done something to be arrested.
There are a lot of Police Officers out there who do a really good job, but, as in many forms of office, there are always one or two who c@ck up the image for everyone else.

..............

Well I've been on a jury twice and the majority of those I was with were actually more inclined to believe the accused rather than the officer, with no actual basis for it. I obviously can't be specific. They almost felt responsible for finding them guilty and 'sending them to prison', even though the facts proved they'd clearly committed an extremely violent crime. So I'd have to disagree that 'the officer would necessarily be believed over anyone else', especially with things like mistakes by police and corruption always reaching the front pages because that's what sells and people are more interested to hear about. Rightly so in some cases, don't get me wrong.

Also, I'm not saying someone 'must have done something wrong to get arrested' at all, quite the opposite, that people are arrested only on suspicion of an offence and that if they haven't actually done anything wrong or it just can't be proved they did, then that will prevail.