England star Danny Rose reveals police regularly stop him when he’s driving and ask ‘is this car stolen?’
ENGLAND’S Danny Rose has revealed police regularly stop him when he is driving and ask “is this car stolen?”
The Tottenham defender, 30, who has previously spoken out about racism in football, also told how he is always asked to show his ticket when he travels first class on a train.
In a typically candid interview with The Player’s Chair podcast, Rose said: “I got stopped by the police last week, which is a regular occurrence whenever I go back to Doncaster, where I’m from.
“And, each time it’s ‘is this car stolen? Where did you get this car? What are you doing here? Can you prove that you bought this car?’
“The police pulled in, they brought a riot van, three police cars and they questioned me saying we’ve had a report that we’ve had a car that was not driving correctly.
“I’m like, ‘Okay, why does that make it my car?’. They got my DL [driving license], they breathalysed me.
“Honestly, it’s just one of those things to me now. I don’t understand what I can do or who I can complain to anymore.”
Rose, who is expected to leave Spurs this Summer, added: “This first happened to me when I was 15 and now, I’m 30. It’s 15 years of this on and off the field happening and there’s no change whatsoever.”
Rose also described a recent exchange in the first-class carriage of a train.
He said: “Whenever I go on the train, you know, one of the last times I got on the train, I got on there with my bags and straight away the attendant says, ‘Do you know this is first class?’ And I say, ‘yeah, so what?’ and they’ll say, ‘oh well, let me see your ticket then?’
“So I show the lady my ticket and this is no word of a lie, two white people walked on the train right after me and oh, she said nothing. And I said, ‘well, are you not going to ask for their tickets?’ And she said, ‘oh well, no, I don’t need to’.
“People might think it happens, but to me that’s racism. These are the sort of things I have to put up with. This is everyday life for me.”
Rose’s experience has echoes of the incident involving Team GB sprinter Bianca Williams last month.
The Metropolitan Police faced accusations of racial profiling after Williams and her partner, Ricardo dos Santos, were pulled from their car in a London street in a stop and search.
A video of the incident, which saw the couple separated from their three-month-old son, was posted online by former Olympic gold medallist Linford Christie.
Last year the notoriously outspoken Rose said he “can’t wait to see the back of football” and was frustrated at the lack of action taken against fans’ racism.
Rose and teammates Raheem Sterling and Callum Hudson-Odoi had racist abuse directed at them during England’s Euro 2020 qualifier against against Montenegro in Podgorica in March 2019.
The hosts were fined €20,000 and ordered to play one match behind closed doors following the abuse – a punishment later condemned by Rose as “shocking”.
He said: “Is walking off teaching them a lesson? If you walk off it’s nothing.
“They are getting fined £10,000. It’s b******s. The FA when it happened they were brilliant, they couldn’t have done anymore.
“But the higher powers of course they can do more. It is just one of those things.”
Rose, who was also abused while on England Under-21 duty in Serbia in 2012, said he will play on but has “had enough” of racism in the game.
He said: “How I programme myself is that I think I’ve got five or six more years left in football, and I just can’t wait to see the back of it.”
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Rose has also spoken about the depression he suffered before the 2018 World Cup, saying a serious knee injury which put the brakes on a protracted big-money move sparked his illness.
His problems were compounded by the suicide of his uncle, an incident where a gun was fired at his house with the bullet narrowly missing his brother, and his mother being racially abused.
In response to Rose’s comments, a spokesman for South Yorkshire Police told the Sun Online: “Our officers work hard to ensure the roads of South Yorkshire are safe.
“As part of this on-going work, officers conduct regular traffic stops of drivers across all roads and areas of South Yorkshire.
“For drivers who feel like they have been targeted for a stop, please be assured our officers’ actions are there to keep you and our communities safe.”
