Section 27 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act

[bb0118]

Seems its not only the big teams that get it....

http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/gloucestershireheadlines/Football-yobs-evicted-county/article-1238377-detail/article.html

Saturday saw Cheltenham Town play their first home fixture of the new season.
Half-an-hour before the 3pm kick-off, officers were called to deal with a minibus full of Grimsby supporters who were drunk and acting disorderly in Bishops Cleeve.
Police used powers available to them under Section 27 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act to exclude the vehicle and its occupants from Gloucestershire.
Officers from the Road Policing Unit then monitored the vehicle until it left county borders.
Two people from the minibus were also arrested and subsequently charged with public order offences.
A 40-year-old man and 50-year-old man, both from Grimsby, were charged with being drunk and disorderly.
They are due to appear at Cheltenham Magistrates Court in September.
PC Mark Smith, who was leading the operation, said: "We welcome any football fans to the county who want to come and support their team as well as enjoy the fantastic facilities that the town has to offer.
"But we hope this incident shows that any disorderly behaviour will not be tolerated.
"We will use all the powers available to us to ensure that they are dealt with appropriately and do not spoil the game for the majority of law-abiding fans."

[Thaumagurist*]

Hmmmm, sounds something like the Team Burbs' Ruck Truck up to Newcastle...

[handbags_harris]

To a certain degree it all depends on what they allegedly did. There are two sides to every story. however as has been stated previously no crime actually needs to be committed for the Police to exercise their Section 27 rights. As a result previous incidents of this power being used have been when there has been apparent "intelligence" of violent crime being planned, but no crime actually being used - Stoke fans in Manchester, Plymouth fans in Doncaster etc. This case is clearly different as it is reported that crime was being / had been committed and Section 27 powers had been used accordingly. But is Section 27 really the right way to deal with this sort of incident? From what I can see is all it does is potentially palm the problem onto other police forces.

Maybe one for Dirkers to investigate...