{"id":2607,"date":"2026-01-15T07:20:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T07:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/?p=2607"},"modified":"2026-01-15T07:20:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T07:20:32","slug":"police-chief-admits-misleading-mps-blaming-ai-for-decision-to-ban-maccabi-tel-aviv-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/?p=2607","title":{"rendered":"Police chief admits misleading MPs, blaming AI for decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-it-comes-ahead-of-the-home-secretary-releasing-a-statement-later-today\">It comes ahead of the Home Secretary releasing a statement later today<\/h2>\n<p>The West Midlands Police chief constable has admitted to misleading MPs after AI was used in a decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from their match with Aston Villa last year.<\/p>\n<p>Chief constable Craig Guildford apologised to MPs for giving them \u201cerroneous\u201d evidence for the decision to prohibit fans of the Israeli team from attending a Europa League match in Birmingham last November.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Police had been accused of misinterpreting the threat posed by the fixture to stop fans of the Israeli club from attending the match.<\/p>\n<p>Guildford had blamed the use of AI for the decision to take actions against Maccabi fans, claiming that he thought the intel had been gathered from a Google search.<\/p>\n<p>He told them: \u201cWithin my narrative, which I have compiled over the weekend, the one assertion in relation to West Ham is completely wrong.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, Craig Guildford, in a letter, has sent a &#8220;profound apology&#8221; to the committee after a fictional match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham was created by AI and used as &#8216;Police intelligence&#8217; to justify banning fans. <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/0ZiVqkhtrn\">pic.twitter.com\/0ZiVqkhtrn<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Central (@WestHam_Central) <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WestHam_Central\/status\/2011363288647446877?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 14, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cI am told that is a result of some\u00a0social media scraping\u00a0that was done, and that is wrong. That was one element in a document that was eight or nine pages long, but we stand by the key tenets in the document.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He was then asked by Paul Kohler MP: \u201cHold on, so you did an AI search, got something about West Ham and just whacked it into the\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Guildford replied: \u201cNo, not at all. We do a very comprehensive assessment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He again denied the use of AI last week.<\/p>\n<p>The chief constable said: \u201cThere was a definite note that we have got to the bottom of in terms of the West Ham game.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">BREAK: West Mids police chief constable Craig Guildford offers \u201cprofound apology\u201d and admits that fictitious Maccabi\/West Ham match included in police \u201cintelligence\u201d used to justify ban ***was*** generated by AI.  <\/p>\n<p>Guildford said the opposite to MPs. <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Ju7ge7P9JN\">pic.twitter.com\/Ju7ge7P9JN<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Gabriel_Pogrund\/status\/2011357799872111101?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 14, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThe summation in the House, it was a question that was asked in the House, was that West Midlands Police may have used AI on this particular occasion.\u00a0We do not use AI.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn the West Ham side of things and how we gained that information, in producing the report, one of the officers would usually go to\u2026 a system, which football officers use all over the country, that has intelligence reports of previous games.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey did not find any relevant information within the searches that they made for that.\u00a0They basically Googled when the last time was. That is how the information came to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chair Karen Bradley asked: \u201cWas it the AI function on Google?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Guildford replied: \u201cI am being really candid here. I am told that\u00a0they just did a Google search\u00a0on that because they could not find it in the normal system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is due make a statement to MPs later today on the matter.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- Bottom ad unit --><\/p>\n<p>    <!-- Custom pseudo content\/category -->\n            <\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/>#Police #chief #admits #misleading #MPs #blaming #decision #ban #Maccabi #Tel #Aviv #fans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It comes ahead of the Home Secretary releasing a statement later today The West Midlands Police chief constable has admitted to misleading MPs after AI was used in a decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from their match with Aston Villa last year. Chief constable Craig Guildford apologised to MPs for giving them \u201cerroneous\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1658,1655,1664,636,1660,1522,1661,1665,1418,1656,1662,1657,1659,221,923,208,1422,1663],"class_list":{"0":"post-2607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured","8":"tag-admits","9":"tag-aston-villa","10":"tag-aviv","11":"tag-ban","12":"tag-blaming","13":"tag-chief","14":"tag-decision","15":"tag-fans","16":"tag-football","17":"tag-home-secretary","18":"tag-maccabi","19":"tag-maccabi-tel-aviv","20":"tag-misleading","21":"tag-mps","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-police","24":"tag-sport","25":"tag-tel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpumpnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}