Football violence: Police in Northumbria accused

In the aftermath of the fighting that broke out between West Ham and Millwall supporters at their Carling Cup tie last night, concerns over football violence are back in the headlines.

But elsewhere cloudy details of another incident, where Sunderland fans clashed with the police earlier this August, are coming to light. And according to some of the supporters caught up in the fighting, the actions taken by Northumbria Police need to be investigated further.

The trouble occurred on Saturday August 8, as Sunderland fans returned by rail from a pre-season friendly against Hearts, an Edinburgh side. That evening, after they had received information that a hooligan firm called the Seaburn Casuals had organised a fight with the Newcastle Gremlins, Northumbria police mounted an operation to deal with a group of about 40 fans who they believed were planning to brawl at Newcastle Central Station.

When officers arrived at the station, these 40 fans attacked the police. During the brawl, one fan lost seven pints of blood, and another required 36 surgical staples to treat a head wound. Today, after the police released photographs of suspected ringleaders, seven people were arrested.

But, as David Conn reported in the Guardian, the controversy surrounds a separate incident. Many fans, who arrived on a later train which had been diverted to the station in Newcastle from its original route, have complained that they were attacked by the police and their dogs without provocation.

According to these Sunderland fans, their train stopped at the station for between 20 and 30 minutes before they were allowed off. Then, they allege, a group of them were pushed, from both behind and in front, by police. One supporter told the Football Supporters Federation that, "the police, for reasons best known to themselves, launched a vicious assault on some of our fans with their batons and let their dogs repeatedly bite some of the fans who had already received severe head wounds or were already lying prone on the ground as a result of being caught up in the melee the police had created."

Despite these accounts, Northumbria Police initially neglected to mention the incident involving supporters from the second train when they released their statement about the operation. The force, in a bid to gather witnesses, initially focused on the injuries to four police dogs - Earl, Cleo, Floyd and Diesel – sustained in the first fight, and only later mentioned the injured Sunderland fans, saying that their injuries were "not thought to be serious", at the end of the statement. Later, Chief Superintendent Neil Mackay said that "around 400 genuine football supporters" from the second train "were taken to the Metro station without incident".

A report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission praised the "professionalism and courage" of the police at the station, but it appears that the fight with the passengers on the second train has not been sufficiently investigated. Currently, some supporters are considering whether to pursue a civil action against the force. "It's the police who should be charged over this, not us," one fan said.

Whatever the outcome, this fighting, and the violence at Upton Park yesterday, show that the hooliganism which blighted English football for so long during the 1970s and 1980s has not been entirely consigned to the past. ·