The Soccer and Cop Episode

Over the past couple of decades, if you follow German soccer.....there is an escalation of cops being dragged out to various games to act as "enforcers" of civility and peace.  From the three leagues of play.....it's guaranteed to be a significant cop presence at top league of play, lesser of a presence at the second league of play, and just a minimum show at the third league.

The cost of this?  Well.....it's generally paid by the city or state.  No one would say much if it were just ten cops, for four hours.  Over the past decade at the major league of play.....there have been games where two hundred cops had to be trucked in from various points of the region....put into armor gear, and forced to deal with a bunch of drunk hooligans who were pretty violent.

Last year....one particular game ended with a serious amount of police action against a pretty unruly crowd.  The game consisted of one German team and one Greek team.  The Greeks brought along some pretty dynamic fans, with significant enthusiasm, and a tendency for physical contact.  All of this lead to the German cops at the episode....using some methods that came to be questioned later as abusive or violent beyond necessity.  The investigation got all of the cops being negative about the whole deal of supporting this soccer protection business.

So this past week, a German state accidentally released some documents which put up the idea of declining to offer maximum cop protection at the games.  An evaluation would occur, and definitely at games for the second and third league....there would likely be lesser cops used to protect the fans.

All of this has gotten some soccer enthusiasts to be a bit negative....feeling they ought to be protected at these games.

Naturally, residents of various towns, cities and states are a bit hyped anyway because they don't think they should have to pay for the cop protection over these overly enthusiastic fans.

Personally, I can't understand why they don't throw a twenty-Euro ($25) fee onto each ticket and force the fans to pay for the cop protection or hire out a private security firm to handle episodes.

What will eventually happen?  Some game will occur where two thousand fans will charge up on a thousand fans......heads will be bashed in.....and fifty people will be carted off to some hospital.  The chief reason for the injuries will be that the cops lessened their show of force and barely twenty cops were used at an episode where normally it'd be a hundred.  Then the national government have to step in....act important and demand that the cops reverse their attendance rule and show dynamic force at all games.

For an American, it's a pretty comparable event to NFL football.  There's probably two hundred cops at every Baltimore Ravens game, along with a hundred private security guys within the stadium itself....to make sure people stay somewhat polite.  Sometimes, it works.....sometimes, it doesn't.

Kinda silly, I admit.  But you just can't get the normal behavior of golfing fans or bowling fans.....at a soccer or football game.  Dont' ask me why....it's just the way it is.