Football hooligan Met detective gets banning order

A Metropolitan Police detective who threw a flare into a crowd and chanted about a fatal helicopter crash has been given a three-year football banning order.

Arsenal fan Gordon Irikefe was barred from all UK football matches following a hearing on Monday at Westminster Magistrates' Court, the force said.

Last week, a police disciplinary hearing found he had breached the Met's standards of professional behaviour.

Det Con Irikefe, who resigned from the force on 12 February before being dismissed without notice, was found to have committed gross misconduct in acts of football hooliganism at Arsenal games between October 2022 and April 2024.

Among the conditions imposed on Irikefe by Westminster Magistrates' Court is a ban on him going within a mile of the club's Emirates Stadium in Holloway, north London. He is also barred from going within two miles of any stadium where the England national team is playing, for four hours before and after any match.

The court heard the officer had come to police notice on numerous occasions for disorderly and anti-social behaviour at football matches, for which he had received management action.

He was heard shouting "helicopter" at an away match against Leicester City in February 2023, the court was told. The club's owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha died with four others when a helicopter crashed outside the King Power Stadium in October 2018.

Irikefe also allegedly made lewd gestures and shouted abuse at a Leicester player, as well as concealing his identity and intimidating other fans including by using pyrotechnics.

The police disciplinary hearing was told he lit and threw a pyrotechnic into the crowd at a match in Munich on 17 April 2024. He was arrested and fined 100 euros (£83) by German police the same day for wearing a full balaclava and sunglasses inside Bayern Munich's Allianz Arena.

Det Supt Emma Bond said Irikefe had shown "an unacceptable pattern of behaviour at football matches for anyone, let alone a police officer who should uphold the highest of standards whether on or off duty".

Irikefe will be placed on the College of Policing's barred list.

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