I wonder how much press coverage this will get?
Monday, September 14, 2009 at 7:25PM You'll have seen this already on one or two message boards and a few blogs. It deserves all the coverage it can get. Remember the Spurs fans who had their faces plastered all over the press and Crimestoppers for allegedly singing indecent chants at the Pompey v Spurs game?
The likes of the Daily Mail and other tabloids had no qualms about going to town in true sensationalist tabloid hack fashion (with obvious support from the police). The assumption being they must surely all be guilty so plaster their faces all over the front page and villianise them before they have a chance of proving otherwise.
Well done to Ian Trow for standing his ground:
9 months to the day, the CCTV images of 16 Spurs supporters were distributed by the police to all national media, and these images were placed in all papers, and on front page of Crimestoppers next to the likes of murderers and drug dealers.
For the first time in the 9 months since I woke up in a hotel in Germany and saw my face and that of my 13 year old son on the TV screen we can now hold our heads up high, having been proved innocent of all charges.
I cannot go into full detail, as we will be bringing civil action (certainly on behalf of Lewis, as I can get all costs covered under Legal Aid) against the police / CPS for the damages their total negligence and lack of due care caused.
In summary though
In December 11 of the 16 people identified themselves to the police (including a 13 and 2 15 year old boys), and were all charged with engaging in racist or indecent chanting.
In February 4 of these people pleaded guilty the other 7 not guilty. The difference is the 4 were singing the Sol Sol song which certainly is indecent. The other 7 were singing songs such as "We've got Ledley at the back".
These 7 people were then banned by Tottenham under the premise that we had been arrested and that contravened the terms of our season ticket (the fact that we had not been found guilty was irrelevant).
Early May all 7 people were offered cautions, as they had not been singing indecent songs, 5 took what I would call the easy route out and accepted the caution, I decided to uphold my principles and decided I have done nothing wrong so why should me and my son admit any form of guilt (which in effect is what a caution does). The police then offered to drop all charges against me if I would get my son to accept a reprimand (they were obviously scared of future repercussions by my son) I rejected this out of principal as well.
Middle of May, the 2 of us went to trial at Portsmouth Magistrates Court and despite there being no evidence to support the charge brought against us we were found guilty basically by association of singing indecent songs, i.e. we can prove bad songs were sung, we can prove you were at the ground, therefore we assume you were singing these songs.
My legal counsel advised me afterwards that this was always going to be the case, it was purely a show trial, in front of national media (invited by the Police). We were given a 3 year Football Banning Order.
Yesterday we had a full re-trial at Portsmouth Crown Court in front of the most senior judge in Hampshire, but I was quite surprised no media was present. The prosecution showed their evidence, to which the judge said "Is that it". We asked for immediate dismissal of the case (before we even had the chance to put our defence case) and after 2 minutes of deliberation the judge that came back and said, "Not guilty, no case to answer and that is totally unanimous of us all and you can tell by the time it it took it was not a hard decision". The judge then ripped into the CPS that this had been brought into his courtroom, and even been tried in the first case.
All costs have been awarded to me, football banning orders lifted etc.
I have been in touch with the club and expect to hear early next week that the season tickets will be returned.
I would like to thank my family, friends, fellow supporters who have supported me in this, and also the Tottenham Trust who gave some invaluable advise and have been in contact with Spurs during the whole scenario.
I am writing this with a sore head (as you can imagine I celebrated hard last night) and with a big :) on my face. I will be going into Tottenham for a few (or maybe more than a few) drinks today, as I am now allowed back into the borough of Haringey on match-days, although I do not have ticket for match.
Thanks for the support
Ian Trow
COYS
Hopefully the club will have a few words of support on this matter too. The whole sorry affair proves how superficial the media are (we all know how they work and what sells papers so it's no real shock), how easily influenced the police are and how the complaintent's quest for what he perceived as undeniable justice can be steam-rolled into a witch-hunt just to appease his ego.
Reader Comments (35)
Fantastic outcome, embarrassing really, full respect to Ian snd his boy - and for all those that supported him
well done mate just goes to show if you believe in yourself and know you are innocent keep going
well done sir stick to the police tose socalist mps i shall drink a large one to you cheers.
Good luck to you mate. Yet another sham by the police, the C.P.S. & caused by that bunch of hacks. What ever happened to the day's of real journalists.
In future can the CPS think before they waste more tax payers money. How many lives would that money have saved in the local Portsmouth Hospital.
congrats sir!
someone sort this guy and his son out with a ticket!
you are martyrs!
Great news made up for you and hi hope that you will enjoy our new stadium in future with your boy and your reputation has a good and loyal fan restored By the police and Tottenham and they should give you a free season ticket for all your heartache lets hope in spite of our defeat to energized UTD we have a great season .Mayyour best wishes come true yours and spurs forever( DAVSPURS. )
It is should be Ian Trow's decision, but can't this outcome be e-mailed to the media whether it be newspaper or tv/radio?
trial by media...............
media editors should named and forced to publicly print an apology to his family
I'd propose a new law.
Whenever the media are legally forced to issue an apology, that it is either given as many column inches as the original story, or if there was a front page relating to it, at minimum their apology must fully occupy the front page too.
That would give the media more of a conscience.
Well done to Ian for your strength of character to stand up for yourself despite what must have been tempting odds to settle.
Its unbeleivable to read such as a story, i wonder sometimes whether the rest of the country's opinions are governed by what they read and hear, 99% of media seems to be about money. Its a bit of a global viscious cycle i guess.
What courage and determination you have to do what is right, much respect!!!!!
This is what we should be reading about in our papers. I dont mean about putting officials and police etc in place, we all make mistakes, rather the positive essence of mankind, those important occurences where someone sticks by what they know to be right.
Not that these sort of people are necesarily ones to parade this, i guess it doesnt sell papers either and its hard not to kid yourself sometimes but it essentually comes down to ones morality. I guess the negativity of media makes this seems scarce nowadays : /
B+
: )
Thanks Dear Mister Levy for the true art of reprting.
News from your average person.
GL all
I saw this story on Newsnow and did a quick Google search to find the original Magistrates Court decision. I found these quotes from Trow's defence lawyer, said in the Magistrates Court:
Angie Cunningham, defending, said the video footage was examined by a professional lip reader who said the youth, who was 13 at the time, could be seen pointing and shouting: 'Come on gay boy, that's my gay boy.'
She added that Trow could only be seen saying the words: 'Come on, that's my gay'.
But the magistrates ruled that Trow had said the same words as the boy.
Ms Cunningham said it could not be assumed that the two defendants joined in other chants heard at the match.
She added: 'They passionately and whole-heartedly believed their behaviour and language didn't overstep the mark of what is acceptable behaviour and language at a football match.'
(Admittedly this is from the Dail Mail; however, be careful painting these two as innocent martyrs when their actions could be deemed to be homophobic)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1182848/Tottenham-supporters-guilty-disgusting-homophobic-football-chants-aimed-Sol-Campbell.html#ixzz0R89oDzSJ
sign this then!!!!
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/fairmediacoverage
there still seems some dispute over what they did say.this will never be resolved.why is the term yids acceptable in football grounds?if someone used the term coons,niggers,wogs their feet wouldnt touch the floor as they were hauled off.yids is teflon ,nobody gets hauled in for useing this racial term why?yiddish is not a people but a language that stems from german(rhine area)it is embedded in football for over 30 years.selective vision should stop.not all people are good or bad .those who use this racial claim are bigoted and the sooner we are one a level playing field the better society will be.
Yid was something aimed at Tottenham and it's fans not because of any Jewish support (Arsenal and other London clubs have just as many Jewish fans). Regardless of where this slipped into the conciousness of every day life and football games, Spurs started to use the term to desensitise it's meaning from a racial slur to something that carried no weight when used as a term of abuse. I think this is a good thing because it means in 50 years this word will have practically no racial undertones. I hope. The point is - the people won.
'Come on, that's my gay'.
??
Really? Who would sing this at a football match? What does it even me? Worst chant ever?
Look, saying 'gay this and gay that' at a football match, we all know its homophobic but fuck me, let's bring in all the Utd and Liverpool fans and have them charged for all their bad taste songs about dead people.
Lets remember - football matches are neck deep in this type of humour. When does it over-step the mark? Well, in Sol Campbell's case, it doesn't take too much to deflect attention away from the fact that he is an egotistic attention seeking twat. Did Ashley Cole ask the police to press charges? Has anyone else? Tell you what, how about we - as Spurs fans - bring charges against Sol Campbell for persistently called us racists?
Gaz, it got thrown out so surely in the eyes of the law they did nothing wrong and have been vindicate?
*vindicated
I guess Ian Trow won't be able to comment on what he did or did not say due to legal reasons. Shame. Would have liked to hear his reasoning on this.
WELL DONE MATE!</B>
Justice in the end. Good to see.
The Daily Mail will probably grab this at some point and pretend the original coverage of this never happened.
As a West Ham fan, all I can say is bloody well done, Mr Trow, for sticking by your principles.
good on you Ian - great to see someone sticking up for their rights and getting the fair result
CPS are to blame for this. Whether they are influenced by the press or PC bureaucracy, they pushed for something and made a huge assumption, on what? Not a lot it seems.
Shame they cant ban more of you smuggy mugs.
Something tells me that's not 'our' filthy.
what annoys me is they chose to make an example of tottenham, one of the least racist and most accepting clubs in english football, when we get the chelsea and arse making gas chamber noises and throwing racist remarks at us in every home and away derby. Portsmouth cant be excused either, they themselves are known for their racist element. sickening.
Well done for sticking to your guns - glad to see that common sense has prevailed. I agree, I doubt we see any of this covered in the media
I'm the real filthy! The real one. Not the smuggy twat above.
Something tells me that filthys a bit two faced by the sounds of it
There will be zero coverage but you should not expect any different. Complete double standards - nothing at all made of the spammers signing you should have died with your brother to Defoe but again we should expect nothing different.
What they've been put through by the police and media is disgusting. The national newspapers that showed their faces should be forced to write a back page apology. Well done to them two on fighting the ban though.
so saying yid is acceptable and in 50 years will have no racial meaning?so lets use use coon,nigger and wog in sport and in time they will be accepted as none racial.i find all these terms offensive,but im not pc.a black man is black not coloured.if hes coloured so am i.im white.
Yes, the media is often pernicious and hypocritical and the police incompetent, and yes other clubs are just as guilty of foul chanting, but some of the language on the terraces at the Lane is vile and we need to acknowledge that. Those same fans who can see no wrong at our club are very quick to condemn the (admittedly pathetic) reaction of the Arsenal fans to Adebayor's goal celebration at the weekend. ALL football supporters have a responsibility to act like decent members of the community, but every week a significant number of supporters let down their supposedly beloved clubs with their behavior. You have to be worried when a Hammer gives you the thumbs up. COYS!