If you are thinking of causing trouble inside or outside the Arena this season, the message is that unless you are prepared to risk a spell inside,forget it.
Everything In Control
If you are thinking of causing trouble inside or outside the Arena this season, the message is that unless you are prepared to risk a spell inside,forget it.
I was fortunate to be shown round the police control room and custody cells today and what I saw was a start of the art hi tech control room high up in the stadium.
There are 64 cameras both inside and outside the stadium including the car parks,these are monitored by both club staff and police who have their backs to the pitch,so they are not distracted by Gary McSheffrey,Dele Adebola or Stern racing through and smacking one into the roof of the net or Andy Marshall diving to push a shot round the post.
There are six main cameras inside the Arena itself and to say these cameras have a phenominal zoom probably understating their ability. An operator could easily catch someone sneaking a crafty fag in a crowd of 25,000+ or doing something more serious. Not surprisingly,these cameras can capture an image and burn it off onto a disk than can be used as evidence in a matter of minutes.
The Control room can house twenty police and club safety officials with ease and offers a perfect views of the whole stadium with no blindspots and is on three levels. The aforementioned camera monitors and their screens are on one level. The Match Commander and the Club's Safety Officer are on the middle level with phones and computer terminals at the ready in case of any problems It is also DDA complaint with a wheelchair lift.
The lower level also has computer terminals and gives a good view for spotters to do their work.
For those who are arrested at the ground, the first stop is the cells. These are at ground level and this area still inside the confines of the stadium houses a briefing room as well as a custody area with computers that link straight to Little Park Street police station,saving reems of paper and speeding up the the custody system after deportment from the ground.
The cells themselves nicknamed "Home & "Away"are bleak. With their whitewash walls and rock hard benches,this is certainly not a place I'd want to spend any amount of time in.
We should not forget that those arrested in the stadium are a very small fraction of those who attend a game and the aim of everyone inside the control box is to ensure that everyone inside the stadium is safe and that there are no incidents. But if an incident does occur, the technology is there to ensure that the matter is dealt with in the fastest possible time.