SCOTLAND’S football clubs have been told they can extinguish pyrotechnic offences inside their stadiums by following England’s lead and using Artificial Intelligence with CCTV surveillance footage to identify ultras who attempt to hide their identities with balaclavas.
Representatives of the Scottish government, Scottish Football Safety Officers Association, Police Scotland, the SFA and the SPFL met at Hampden on Tuesday to discuss the growing problem of fans setting off flares, smoke grenades, strobes and rockets inside stadiums.
An action plan is now set to be drawn up which key stakeholders in the game in this country hope will help to eradicate a dangerous practice that jeopardises the safety of supporters and has been on the rise in the past few seasons.
Peter Houghton of the Football Safety Officers Association in England has revealed how clubs down south have effectively snuffed out their pyrotechnic problem after witnessing an explosion in off-field unrest when lockdown restrictions were lifted back in 2021.
The Football Policing Unit – an organisation that operates in England and Wales – released figures in September last year which showed that incidents involving fireworks at matches had almost doubled from 394 to 729 in the 2021/22 season.
But Houghton, who has worked in stadium safety for his boyhood heroes Manchester City for 28 years, stressed that they are now extremely rare in the top division.
“We had pyrotechnic use all boxed off up until Covid,” he said. “It only really happened on derby day. But after lockdown restrictions were lifted and fans were allowed back inside grounds things changed.
“There is a line in The Clash song Bankrobber which says, ‘Imagine if all the boys in jail could get out now together’. That is what it was like. It became a bit like the Alamo.
“Everybody had been stuck in their houses for months and they just wanted to misbehave. Fortunately, we have just got to grips with that now two or three years on. Pyrotechnic use is less of a problem in England now than it was after Covid. There is less and less evidence of it.
“I hope that is because our safety officers are very good at their jobs. They plan for it every week, put risk assessments together for pyrotechnics and try their very best to keep it away from their stadiums.
“Their efforts seem to be having an impact. It might just be the time of the season. It might be that come the business end of the season it all comes back. Maybe if Liverpool score against City this weekend we will get a lot of red flares. But by and large it is not something that we see down here any more.”
So what did clubs in England do to address the issue and what can their counterparts in Scotland learn from their experiences?
Houghton told how having sniffer dogs positioned outside turnstiles and putting increasingly sophisticated video surveillance systems inside stadiums has been highly effective in both deterring and prosecuting troublemakers.
“If your prevention measures at the turnstiles are successful then that helps. But it is difficult to detect someone smuggling in pyrotechnics or be proactive in stopping them. Some of these smoke canisters will fit into a cigarette packet. If that is given to a kid to stick down his undies then that is going to get in undetected. There was evidence of that happening a few years ago
“But that is where CCTV comes in. Even before CCTV got as sophisticated as it now is, the local cops in Manchester would generally be able to find out who the offender was if they had any kind of image of him. The current ones, with Artificial Intelligence, tracking and everything else, make the job even easier.
“Clubs have fairly sophisticated CCTV systems now which can basically track you from the moment you appear anywhere near the site until the moment you leave it. They can follow you just about everywhere.
“If a guy is stood there waving a pyrotechnic device about it is easy to detect his seat number. The arrest doesn’t have to take place on the day. He can be picked up on the Thursday when officers have had a good chance to look at the CCTV and find out who he is.”
Many ultras in Scotland wear balaclavas and sunglasses or cover their faces with scarves when they are setting off flares, smoke grenades and strobes. They also move away from their allocated seats. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, for both the police and club security staff to identify and apprehend them.
However, Houghton has witnessed first hand how advancements in modern technology have made attempts to conceal identity futile and revealed that no fewer than 14 Premier League clubs now use the latest video surveillance software at their grounds.
“Adding AI is something that is pretty new at the moment,” he said. “But there are companies who are adding elements of Artificial Intelligence to CCTV and other things in the stadium. They make it virtually impossible for anyone to make themselves anonymous.
“The AI is attached to CCTV as part of the process. There are one or two issues with it at the ICO (the Information Commissioner’s Office). People are complaining that it breaches GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and a lot of other things. It is pretty much in its infancy at the moment.
“But there are companies out there which are saying ‘Okay, if you have got X, Y and Z on your CCTV then we can attach this to it and we will know who everybody is and everything else about them’. It is frightening what they can do.
“A fan putting a balaclava on changes his appearance doesn’t it? But the guy has had to have got into the stadium somehow, either with a ticket or a season card. The identification can now be carried out through those channels rather than just by appearance.”
There was an outcry in Scottish football back in 2016 when the SPFL asked Holyrood for financial support to help them introduce facial recognition technology at stadiums and identify those guilty of violence, sectarian singing, racist abuse, pyrotechnic use and other prohibited behaviours. The plan, which would have cost £4m to implement, was eventually shelved.
But could using Artificial Intelligence with CCTV now help to weed out troublemakers who are determined to set off flares and smoke grenades on match days and believe they can evade capture?
