Kevin Whitcher
My head has cleared a little since writing this after a night without sleep, and putting modesty to one side, I actually surprise myself that I managed to put something relatively lucid together on Wednesday morning after the previous 15 hours I’d experienced. However, there is more to say about this sorry incident, and I am hopeful that some good might come out of it.
Firstly, I was, I guess, partly in shock on Wednesday. Others were very angry on my behalf, but I guess I was just too fatigued to really feel more than a sense of resignation at that time. Saddened too, at the injustice, and the realization I could well be facing a lengthy ban from attending Arsenal matches. However, there is no way of getting round the fact. For selling a spare ticket without making any profit, to enable a fan to sit in a seat for an Arsenal match rather than it remain empty, I spent ten hours in police custody, almost nine of them awaiting a 15 minute interview. Given the gravity of the ‘offence’, it is pretty shocking and an indictment of the legal process in this country.
Some detail that I didn’t really go into on Wednesday. Firstly, the ticket I was exchanging was in a sealed envelope, with the collector’s name written on it with the amount due (the face value of the ticket, £66 for a Grade A match). Is this the way that a ticket tout operates? The arresting office actively opened the envelope. Could, at this point, some common sense have been used? I guess I am asking if there is a modicum of intelligence in the arresting officer, but sadly, there was just an automatic assumption that I was guilty. There was an anti-touting operation – called Operation Podium - in progress that evening and plenty of plain clothes police at work. Perhaps they needed something to show for the amount of public money that was being spent as they weren’t having much luck with the real touts. I have heard that five arrests were made for touting that night, and apart from myself, I am aware that at least another of those was an individual who was sorting others out with no profit involved. I was frogmarched in handcuffs down Drayton Park to the police van that drove me to Holloway police station, as if I was a danger to society at large.
But the most amazing thing of all probably happened at the station, and I think even took the arresting officer by surprise. The booking in procedure of suspects at the desk next to the cells is not a brief process and needs to be carried out by a sergeant. There were three sergeants present at the time, but only one of them was doing any booking in, in spite of there being a free terminal that could have been used by one of the others. Only the suspect being booked in was allowed inside the building. Everyone else had to wait in a queue – with their arresting officer - outside in the cold, in handcuffs. So for 75 minutes, I waited, and those behind me would have waited even longer as when I was admitted to the building, it took an hour for me to be booked in. The arresting officer was an Arsenal fan with initial illusions that he would be able to get back to the stadium to watch the match. As it dawned on him how long he would be waiting, I suspect he regretted the decision to arrest me just a little bit. He was not finished at the station until after the full time whistle was blown. He was very enthusiastic about the goals going in and wanted to share his excitement with me while we were waiting outside in the cold. For some strange reason, he couldn’t work out why I wasn’t jumping through hoops at the news he was getting on his mobile. Still, as I said, he wasn’t the brightest button in the box.
My treatment was no great surprise to me, but it was confirmation. You may be innocent until proven guilty, but you are treated like a criminal by the system from the moment you are arrested. As Holloway station closed after 1am, I was transported to Islington station where the whole booking in procedure had to be repeated – however, mercifully there, I was allowed to wait inside the building while the suspect ahead of me was booked in.
At one point in the early hours, I was offered some food in my cell. I said yes. However they forgot about it, came back about an hour later to ask me again if I wanted something to eat, and was that time actually fed. It wasn’t the most appetizing microwave meal I had ever eaten but needs must.
When I was released on bail, the police kept all the cash I had on me, as well as my mobile phone – as evidence. Luckily I was parked up in the Highbury area, but if I’d have needed money to make my way home – say to top up an Oyster Card or something, I’d have had a long walk instead. If I’d lived in, for example, Putney, well, it doesn’t really bear thinking about. Minus phone, I would have had difficulty contacting anyone to come and collect me. Additionally, the fact that I was bailed to return in mid-April meant that I had lost my contact numbers on my mobile for as long as the police deigned to keep it. And all this after the interview established that I was not – in the spirit of the word – a tout. I should be incandescent with rage, but in truth my opinion of the police has not been high for a number of years after earlier experiences of their general attitude when I had done no wrong, but was assumed to have done so. In fact this resigned view probably helped me mentally get through the long hours I spent under arrest. Nothing about the way I was treated surprised me.
Perhaps the operation to catch genuine ticket touts on the night in question was not a great success because the real touts are too clever to get caught these days. They are well versed with the technicalities of the law and are not easily caught. The law needs to be changed. One will take the money from a buyer, a runner will then go and seek the membership card or paper ticket concerned from a third individual holding it and then, once the man with the money has walked away from the buyer, the ticket or card is handed over. There is no direct contact between the tout taking the money and the individual that hands over the ticket or card to the buyer. So in effect, the law devised to catch them can only really be used on genuine fans like myself who do not consider they are carrying out a criminal act.
So the law is, undoubtedly in this instance, an ass. But what worries me is some of the accounts I have read of others since I publicized my experience. One comment under the original piece read as follows (I’ve tidied up the punctuation a little) –
This happened to my husband. He sold a spare ticket at less than face value rather than let it go to waste. He was handcuffed, bundled in the police van and I was already in the ground. I can tell you it was a nightmare. He had a big fine and now a criminal record. The club wanted to take our season tickets away and AISA were helpful. I went and reported my ticket lost and got a duplicate for the rest of season because the police kept the original for evidence and then sent it back to club many months later.
This for selling a spare for less than it was worth. You have to wonder about the merits of the legal process.
There have been a few mentions about the club’s terms and conditions and the rule that does allow the re-sale of tickets to known acquaintances for face value or less. This could be of assistance in a future defence, but it should be remembered that I was arrested on a point of law, which is nothing to do with the club’s terms and conditions. The club had nothing to do with my arrest, and I am 100% certain that those who believe there is some kind of agenda against me on the club’s part because I am critical of the manager’s methods or the way the club’s money is used are well wide of the mark. As it happens, I know people that work for the club at relatively senior levels who privately have sympathy for certain of my views. Further down the line, the club may be able to use some discretion, such as whether to allow me to use my season ticket seat until this is resolved. But it has to be remembered that if, in a court of law, there is an order that I am not allowed inside the Emirates, or within a mile of the stadium on a matchday, the club have to uphold the law, wrong as it may be. And sitting here typing now, the realization that I might not be able to watch an Arsenal match in the flesh again until 2015, going on the precedents of what has happened to others is hardly filling me with joy. What exactly have I done to deserve this?
However, out of the darkness there is some hope. I have been truly taken aback and astonished at the amount of support I have received, both in the form of emails and in the comments under the original piece. The response has genuinely lifted my spirits, and let me take this opportunity to express my thanks to everyone I haven’t already. There is even a nascent Twitter hash tag labeled #freewhitcher, started by Gingers for Limpar which gave me a right old chuckle yesterday. Assuming I am taken to court, then I intend to fight this all the way in an effort to get the law revised, because it plainly isn’t working, and indeed, looking at this piece online - which appears to date from the time when Jack Straw was home secretary, this appears to have been the case for a long time. I have had offers of free legal help and also the idea of a collection to fund a legal campaign has been suggested. I would imagine that this would become a test case and national organisations like the Football Supporters Federation might become involved. If I am given a court date, I will then get someone to instigate an online petition which I am sure can get tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of signatures from supporters of all clubs and would be using that as part of my argument in a court of law. I will also take up the offer of character references from those that know me, and going by the offers of help, I can envisage they might take up half a day of court time. I suspect I’d even get one from the club. And I am prepared to take this as far as I can because what happened seems to happen to others on a frequent basis. And it is plainly wrong that a football supporter should end up with a criminal record and a ban from watching matches because he is doing something which the likes of Viagogo are allowed to do for a profit, and that Arsenal facilitate themselves – granted, taking an admin fee rather than Viagogo style profits – through their own Ticket Exchange mechanism. Quite simply, it is not immoral, so why are people being criminalised?
And if the case is dropped – and as PR for the police’s anti-touting operations, this is pure gold-dust, a snowball rolling downhill gathering momentum and slowly turning into an avalanche, I suspect it could be – then I will use my position as a committee member on the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association – who have established links with the police – to change the way that the police handle these types of incidents outside the stadium. It is blatantly obvious who the tickets touts are. The reason innocent fans are being arrested for the exercise of a face value exchange of cash for a spare match ticket is presumably an exercise of power, a justification of the role. Like a traffic warden has to issue a certain amount of tickets, perhaps a police officer has to make a certain amount of arrests to justify their presence? Who knows. But it is certainly something that needs addressing. The laws devised to catch the real villains do not seem to be working that way. One thought is that – as the club’s terms and conditions do allow the transfer of tickets for individual matches that the holder cannot attend – a system of advance notification could be devised whereby the club know that someone else is using the ticket. A print out of such notification could serve as a demonstration to the police that no shenanigans are taking place when a ticket is handed over outside the stadium. That is just a suggestion, but something has to change.
I will doubtless be asked again to help out with spares in the future because the friends who sit near me sometimes cannot make matches due to work commitments. Obviously, I won’t be accepting any money agreed for their ticket on their behalf, but I will still hand over a spare ticket to someone collecting it. The police cannot stop me doing that.
I received an interesting email yesterday, which may just suggest there is a bit of backpeddling in the air. I have no recollection of giving the police my email address, which leads me to believe the club – who I know are aware of the story from reading the website – may have intervened. The email was from the ‘Arsenal Football Investigations Officer’ at Islington Police station and read as follows –
Dear Mr Whitcher,
I would be grateful if you could call me to arrange the return on your mobile telephone. I can be reached on the mobile number out of office hours.
An out of hours telephone number? Not quite in sympathy with the treatment I received on Tuesday evening/Wednesday morning. The killer is the wording at the bottom of the email…
Total Policing is the Met's commitment to be on the streets and in your communities to catch offenders, prevent crime and support victims. We are here for London, working with you to make our capital safer.
That’s right folks. The streets were a lot safer between Tuesday evening and the early hours of Wednesday morning because this particular stain on society was behind bars. In the words of Richard Littlejohn, you just couldn’t make it up…
