Not sure if you're serious there, but if so, maybe you should ask the families of those two poor girls who got murdered in Manchester when they were tricked into thinking they were responding to a burglar? Just saying, you know. 99.9% of them are regular people just trying to do a good job, with a few who shouldn't be there, just like 99.9% of Palace fans are decent people, with just a few idiots who we could all do without. You always get a few, but it is only ever just a few.

A spokesperson wouldn't give any form of opinion at all! But that's all I'm doing here. That last post was only in response to the one before. Only a joke he may feel, or perhaps he is actually ignorant or just naive enough to actually believe that. But like that other guy said, it's kind of ironic to use it when he's very likely to be one of the ones who feels 'football fans are treated harshly and all labelled as the same troublemakers by the police'.

Knowing a few Old Bill, I think the majority would much rather be doing what they signed up for, directly helping people by catching the bad guys (probably in a fast car!), those ones burgling your houses and mugging your grans - Not standing outside a football ground in the cold and rain on a Saturday afternoon when it's supposed to be their day off! But like I said before, football definitely isn't rugby or cricket where all the fans sit together and generally get along is it, so they have a need to be there.

Anyway, my responses to you, 'mapletree' and 'lyons550' yesterday were more relevant to what we've been going on about, if you haven't seen them. From the last thing you've said today, i can only add that I don't think that being at football would be regarded by an officer as a differentiating factor (in terms of when you've mentioned writing their statements about what happened and how the person behaved etc). By that I mean, if a person acted the very same way outside a nightclub or a shop, they'd be writing almost exactly the same thing about it all.

Now whether that person eventually pleaded/got found guilty and then got treated differently by the courts, just because it happened to be at a football match or was 'football related', perhaps they would. Is that fair? Perhaps not. Perhaps it depends in the factors, such as a pre-organised football fight could be seen as worse than a completely sporadic one in a Town Centre, even if they ended up as the same type of fight (because of the planning involved and prior intent to be violent in public). Just a random example of how they could see things differently to another, I'm not saying I necessarily agree it should matter.

You seem knowledgable, but I think a lot of people forget that the police are separate to the justice system. They don't make the rules and of course aren't the ones who decide who's guilty or what punishment they get. I'm sure they, just like most law abiding citizens and decent people, would rather see the real criminals getting much longer sentences than what they do. Like this week, the guy who was already a known criminal out on a 'suspended sentence' who punched and killed that completely innocent guy and only got 4 1/2 years - in the words of the victims' family, "An absolutely joke!" I did hear it's being looked into for a review of the sentence though.

So I was saying yesterday that we're going around in circles a bit here. It's a huge subject and I understand the points you've made and do sympathise with those who genuinely have been treated unfairly before. I just have a different opinion on a lot of it than you, mainly that I blame those who cause trouble at football in the first place for a lot of the consequences for others that follow. It's a Friday night and it may not sound like it the way I ramble on, but again I'm just going to have to suggest agreeing to disagree on a lot of this now. If a haven't bored to death, feel free to keep it going or have the last word though mate!......

My girlfrinds a Copper....

But she insists she's strawberry blonde...

Ginger innit

A really good and open thread this. Anyone who has been stopped and breatherlysed for driving out of a pub car park for no other reason than where they have come from, can see the point being made here. You would hope that the boys in blue might use their training, experience and common sense in these circunstances, but more often than not their action is based on steriotyping drivers and pub goers. The same very much goes for football fans, as far as ol' bill is concerned.