A damning report has revealed that West Midlands Police fabricated and exaggerated evidence to justify banning Israeli fans from attending a football match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Aston Villa. The inspector of constabulary found that officers made misleading public statements, conflated sources, and relied on false claims about fan behaviour, including incidents that never occurred or were grossly overstated. The police also presented fictional evidence generated by an Artificial intelligence tool and failed to properly engage with the local Jewish community before implementing the ban.

The report accuses the force of confirmation bias, stating that the misleading case against Maccabi fans allowed police to push through their preferred option of a total ban. Senior officers attempted to cover up their actions and issued public statements that presented an imbalanced picture of events. The chief constable, Craig Guildford, was criticized for poor intelligence handling, ineffective community engagement, and failing to foresee the damage to public trust. The fallout from these revelations could have serious consequences for the leadership of West Midlands Police.