This story has been horribly misreported in the mainstream media. Suffice to say that the AI gaff was the very thinnest pretence for a politically motivated firing. The true reason being that West Midlands Police made the UK govt furious for suggesting that maybe Maccabi were violent thugs rather than persecuted victims, which goes against prevailing official narratives WRT Israel.
I'll share my opposing view point. Whilst Maccabi fans may contain hooligans, that's not really surprising for football fans. Fans travelling within Europe cause trouble all the time.
What is different, is that Maccabi fans were blocked from attending by the police/council when no other sets of fans are given the same treatment. Secondly, the police were aware of plans within the Birmingham Muslim community to attack said fans. Instead of coming down on these people planning violence, they decided to avoid the situation entirely.
Furthermore, they ignored evidence from the Amsterdam authorities who haven't said the Maccabi fans were as riotous as you claim. Using AI hallucinations was just the cherry on the cake.
It later transpired the real reason the Police wanted to ban the group:
"West Midlands Police did have "high confidence intelligence" that members of the local community in Birmingham were planning to arm themselves to attack Maccabi supporters."
Because the police didn't want to upset the "local community" (which is predominantly Muslim), they hunted around for reasons to ban them as that was easier than EG enforcing the law and stopping people getting attacked by mobs.
Maccabi fans were also found guilty by the UEFA governing body just in December of racist chants (referring to an Arab-Israeli as a "terrorist") in a separate episode:
After months of widespread protests across the UK, the police in West Midlands looked at multiple intelligence reports and concluded that protests and violence would be inevitable if the match went ahead and fans from Maccabi Tel Aviv were allowed to travel to Aston Villa's ground. Their advice was that away fans should not be granted tickets to the event.
The issues at the core of this decision are about alleged antisemitism rising in the UK, presumed violence of a group of fans with an uncertain intelligence picture, and how decisions were made with these analyses trading off against each other.
He resigned because of that process leading to the Home Secretary no longer having confidence in him.
I don't think the misleading of the select committee would have helped him, but he gave an answer based on all that he knew at that point in time, with the best of intentions. The fact he hadn't been briefed isn't his fault. The fact he leaned into a decision that had wide-ranging political ramifications without first opening up the discussion to more stakeholders is his fault, and it's why he's no longer in the job.
The body that made the recommendation, the "Safety and Advisory Board" met several times and changed their report multiple times. When it was finally released they redacted large parts of the decision making process including saying that:
* The police didn't want the match to go ahead (prior to any evidence for that)
* Two local Muslim councillors (Labour and Lib Dem) had been lobbying against it going ahead with one saying (quote) 'we are the voice of the people'
Additionally:
* They edited the report saying risk to local muslim residents went from Medium -> High
* They edited the report saying risk to fans travelling went from High -> Medium.
* They adjusted the number of police needed from 1200 -> 5000 in order to try and justify the decision.
When the full unredacted report was leaked, then they were put on the back foot and falsely threw out that they'd got the evidence (including of local muslim residents in Amsterdam being thrown in a river, which didn't happen) from a Dutch Police report, which wasn't true.
Anyone with a brain in the police should know that recommending cancellation or banning away fans from a Champion's League game is a major international news
story. The chief of police needs to be on top of the details and 100% sure that the evidence is there.
Right next door to Aston Villa is Birmingham's Perry Bar ward, where they elected the independent MP Ayoub Khan, for what seems to be his support for the Palestinian side of the Israel-Palestine war.
The West Midlands police were keen to give the impression that they were even-handed and fair in banning Maccabi fans, claiming they consulted multiple faith communities in Birmingham, and besides Maccabi fans are rotters, look at what they did at this other match.
The other match did not exist. The Jewish community did not ask for the Maccabi fans to be banned. Those were lies.
> As the match was played last month, pro-Palestinian protesters, including Independent MP Ayoub Khan, gathered outside the stadium, waving flags and banners calling for an end to violence in Gaza.
In my view, the West Midlands police probably had partisan community leaders like Mr Khan tell them to keep Jewish/Israeli fans out of Birmingham or they'd cause a riot, and the police meekly went along with this, then concealed this true reason, and made up bullshit reasons for banning the fans... which they have been caught out on, because they used a chatbot that hallucinated falsehoods and they didn't even verify it before using it as justification to a Parliamentary select committee.
That is what is known as misleading Parliament. That's why the chief's position is untenable.
All comments seem to assume the officers lied about not using AI, but the article doesn't actually say that:
> officers had found this material through a Google search
> the erroneous result concerning the West Ham v Maccabi Tel Aviv match arose as result of a use of Microsoft Co Pilot
> his force used fictional output from Microsoft Copilot
What this says is that the material originates from Copilot.
I suppose you can read that and interpret that they lied about the Google search, but if you assume incompetence over malice, the more likely interpretation is that they didn't properly verify their source found through Google. It could have been the source of the source of their source that used Copilot, not the officers themselves.
The takeaway here is that even if you don't use AI tools and do things as you did before AI, you may still be basing your work on AI content.
A parallel may someone saying they don't use AI in their code because they don't use AI tools, but then it turns out that a dependency of a dependency is built by AI.
How about an origin agnostic rule for soccer fans: they must wear portable cameras, and pay a bail (which they get back upon good behavior), they pay the escrow at the point of arrival (border train station or at the airport) and return the camera gear at point of departure, upon which they get their escrow back.
Aggressive hooligans don't come at all, or pay ever greater escrows (doubling whenever they misbehave, or halvig when they behave (but never halving below the minimum escrow value).
I think local population would appreciate such measures, regardless of the origin or religious affiliation of aggressive soccer fans.
Sure the soccer industry may suffer from a decrease in ticket sales, but at some point its not soccer industry, but a vacation of violence for the highest bidder... and the local population pays in material damages...
I've been running tests on exactly this - AI systems making things up when they hit structural limits.
Tested 5 architectures (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Llama, DeepSeek) with a 13-question battery targeting edge cases where self-reference collides with operational constraints.
The interesting finding: hallucination patterns aren't random - they follow architectural signatures. Each system fails in predictable ways when forced to reconcile contradictory instructions with their training.
27 comments
[ 0.89 ms ] story [ 49.0 ms ] threadI wonder if this was one of those Google AI "summaries" that people are so happy to trust.
The judiciary are using it too: https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/overwhelming-support-...
I have only found one news source that actual tells the story properly (warning, long read): https://whispering.media/the-maccabi-gospel/
What is different, is that Maccabi fans were blocked from attending by the police/council when no other sets of fans are given the same treatment. Secondly, the police were aware of plans within the Birmingham Muslim community to attack said fans. Instead of coming down on these people planning violence, they decided to avoid the situation entirely.
Furthermore, they ignored evidence from the Amsterdam authorities who haven't said the Maccabi fans were as riotous as you claim. Using AI hallucinations was just the cherry on the cake.
"West Midlands Police did have "high confidence intelligence" that members of the local community in Birmingham were planning to arm themselves to attack Maccabi supporters."
https://news.sky.com/story/ai-evidence-a-fake-match-and-misl...
Because the police didn't want to upset the "local community" (which is predominantly Muslim), they hunted around for reasons to ban them as that was easier than EG enforcing the law and stopping people getting attacked by mobs.
It's just more two tier policing in the UK.
https://www.uefa.com/uefaeuropaleague/clubs/57477--m-tel-avi...
Why is it only Birmingham that saw fit to ban them?
https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/47336888/maccabi-tel-...
And their fans did a racist rampage again Palestinian Arabs just the other day:
https://www.newarab.com/news/maccabi-fans-attack-palestinian...
After months of widespread protests across the UK, the police in West Midlands looked at multiple intelligence reports and concluded that protests and violence would be inevitable if the match went ahead and fans from Maccabi Tel Aviv were allowed to travel to Aston Villa's ground. Their advice was that away fans should not be granted tickets to the event.
The issues at the core of this decision are about alleged antisemitism rising in the UK, presumed violence of a group of fans with an uncertain intelligence picture, and how decisions were made with these analyses trading off against each other.
He resigned because of that process leading to the Home Secretary no longer having confidence in him.
I don't think the misleading of the select committee would have helped him, but he gave an answer based on all that he knew at that point in time, with the best of intentions. The fact he hadn't been briefed isn't his fault. The fact he leaned into a decision that had wide-ranging political ramifications without first opening up the discussion to more stakeholders is his fault, and it's why he's no longer in the job.
Something I always expect from TheRegister.
God forbid they enforce the law.
The body that made the recommendation, the "Safety and Advisory Board" met several times and changed their report multiple times. When it was finally released they redacted large parts of the decision making process including saying that:
* The police didn't want the match to go ahead (prior to any evidence for that)
* Two local Muslim councillors (Labour and Lib Dem) had been lobbying against it going ahead with one saying (quote) 'we are the voice of the people'
Additionally:
* They edited the report saying risk to local muslim residents went from Medium -> High
* They edited the report saying risk to fans travelling went from High -> Medium.
* They adjusted the number of police needed from 1200 -> 5000 in order to try and justify the decision.
When the full unredacted report was leaked, then they were put on the back foot and falsely threw out that they'd got the evidence (including of local muslim residents in Amsterdam being thrown in a river, which didn't happen) from a Dutch Police report, which wasn't true.
Anyone with a brain in the police should know that recommending cancellation or banning away fans from a Champion's League game is a major international news story. The chief of police needs to be on top of the details and 100% sure that the evidence is there.
Not according to the news reports. They say e.g. he "blamed what he described as the "political and media frenzy" for his decision to step down."
Last year, a man named Jihad Al-Shamie attacked a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur and killed two congregants before he could be stopped.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd63p1djgd7o
Antisemitic attacks have increased. Jews do not feel safe in Birmingham.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvdxrr0mxpo
Right next door to Aston Villa is Birmingham's Perry Bar ward, where they elected the independent MP Ayoub Khan, for what seems to be his support for the Palestinian side of the Israel-Palestine war.
The West Midlands police were keen to give the impression that they were even-handed and fair in banning Maccabi fans, claiming they consulted multiple faith communities in Birmingham, and besides Maccabi fans are rotters, look at what they did at this other match.
The other match did not exist. The Jewish community did not ask for the Maccabi fans to be banned. Those were lies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c98ng15qmy9o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cev82g41vpdo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxw2nv6vzzo
> As the match was played last month, pro-Palestinian protesters, including Independent MP Ayoub Khan, gathered outside the stadium, waving flags and banners calling for an end to violence in Gaza.
In my view, the West Midlands police probably had partisan community leaders like Mr Khan tell them to keep Jewish/Israeli fans out of Birmingham or they'd cause a riot, and the police meekly went along with this, then concealed this true reason, and made up bullshit reasons for banning the fans... which they have been caught out on, because they used a chatbot that hallucinated falsehoods and they didn't even verify it before using it as justification to a Parliamentary select committee.
That is what is known as misleading Parliament. That's why the chief's position is untenable.
> officers had found this material through a Google search
> the erroneous result concerning the West Ham v Maccabi Tel Aviv match arose as result of a use of Microsoft Co Pilot
> his force used fictional output from Microsoft Copilot
What this says is that the material originates from Copilot.
I suppose you can read that and interpret that they lied about the Google search, but if you assume incompetence over malice, the more likely interpretation is that they didn't properly verify their source found through Google. It could have been the source of the source of their source that used Copilot, not the officers themselves.
The takeaway here is that even if you don't use AI tools and do things as you did before AI, you may still be basing your work on AI content.
A parallel may someone saying they don't use AI in their code because they don't use AI tools, but then it turns out that a dependency of a dependency is built by AI.
Aggressive hooligans don't come at all, or pay ever greater escrows (doubling whenever they misbehave, or halvig when they behave (but never halving below the minimum escrow value).
I think local population would appreciate such measures, regardless of the origin or religious affiliation of aggressive soccer fans.
Sure the soccer industry may suffer from a decrease in ticket sales, but at some point its not soccer industry, but a vacation of violence for the highest bidder... and the local population pays in material damages...
Tested 5 architectures (GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, Llama, DeepSeek) with a 13-question battery targeting edge cases where self-reference collides with operational constraints.
The interesting finding: hallucination patterns aren't random - they follow architectural signatures. Each system fails in predictable ways when forced to reconcile contradictory instructions with their training.
Full methodology and raw outputs: https://github.com/moketchups/Demerzel