Hillsborough Inquests verdict - 96 Unlawfully Killed.

Rafateria said:
Crown Prosecution Service confirms it will now begin process of formally considering criminal charges over Hillsborough.
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I think that this would meet the CPS test for prosecution - especially for gross negligence manslaughter. I know about other GNM cases and what people have been prosecuted for; this situation involved far more negligence than other successful convictions.
 
27 years is an awful length of time to have to fight for this, well done those who kept it up all these years. Hopefully those responsible will now be taken to task.
 
Revan said:
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That is disgusting. :mad:
 
Great news for the families and friends of the victims. I'm absolutely delighted for them. Now the guilty parties need to pay.
 
Fantastic news for the families, and congratulations to those who have persisted for 27 long years to get this result. Now those who were truly at fault need to pay for their actions.

Bit of light relief, but this is what Liverpool's new international ambassador has tweeted on the morning the news has broke:



:lol:
 
ArmandTamzarian said:
27 years is an awful length of time to have to fight for this, well done those who kept it up all these years. Hopefully those responsible will now be taken to task.
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That is one of the remarkable and courageous things about it, that the families never gave up, kept fighting the system which was trying so determined to cover it up and today they have finally had justice for those 96 who sadly lost their lives.
 
Revan said:
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I don't know any of the details of Ingham's role in the case, but what an absolute fecking cnut. I hope he's punished severely for any part played. How much talk is there of criminal prosecutions resulting from the inquest's findings?

Huge well done as well to all families of victims, and Liverpool fans involved in the case and campaign for justice. They've done incredibly well to clear their names and get the truth out there.
 
Joemo said:
Fantastic news for the families, and congratulations to those who have persisted for 27 long years to get this result. Now those who were truly at fault need to pay for their actions.

Bit of light relief, but this is what Liverpool's new international ambassador has tweeted on the morning the news has broke:



:lol:
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It's deleted, what did he say?
 
It's taken 27 years of the families walking through one of the darkest storms to engulf the justice system in this country. They kept their heads held high and finally, they have the golden sky and justice for the 96! YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE
 
Think everybody knew this, but so glad its now official. Great news

The only bad thing is the fact that those who are at fault will not be held accountable (it seems).

JF96 indeed. R.I.P.
 
A long-overview verdict over a cover up that we will hopefully never see the likes of again. I can't even begin to imagine the hurt and anger those closely connected to the disaster must have felt over the last 27 years. Although by no means coming close to making up for the prejudice and ineptitude of all authorities involved, families knowing that their lost ones have had their names legally and rightfully cleared of any wrong doing must be a solace. Perhaps more fitting than ever before, RIP the 96.
 
I've watched several diagrams of the event and while i don't live in Britain i don't understand one thing. It's clearly the fault of the authorities who let all those people enter that area in those numbers but why, when the stands got crowded why they got crushed? Why they didn't stop entering? Hasn't anyone yelled to stop? Stupid question probably, as they probably did but i still don't understand why they kept pushing.
 
Sylar said:
Think everybody knew this, but so glad its now official. Great news

The only bad thing is the fact that those who are at fault will not be held accountable (it seems).

JF96 indeed. R.I.P.
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Not knocking you, but this was a common belief when the e-petition was doing the rounds a few years ago: "Yeah, I'll sign it, I hope they get the truth, but I don't think it'll happen." I think those with something to lose will do their damnedest to escape justice, but that it will catch up with them in the end. The families of the victims have a whole city behind them. They'll do it.
 
very, very, very long read - but a superb read all the same -

There were some police officers whose decency stood out. One was Russell Greaves, a detective constable who tried to revive Sarah Hicks, 19, on the pitch after she had been brought out of the crush next to her sister, Vicki, 15. Trevor and Jenni Hicks, the girls’ parents, had given heart-wrenching evidence. Trevor was said by witnesses to have been running between the girls, as desperate attempts were made to revive them, shouting and pleading: “Not both of them: they’re all I’ve got.”

Trevor Hicks himself tried to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Vicki, which involved, he testified, sucking vomit from her mouth, then he went with her in an ambulance – another scene of hell, with a teenage crush victim, Gary Jones, on the floor, and Hicks trying not to stand on him. He believed another ambulance would be along for Sarah but, as Greaves recalled, no ambulance came. They carried Sarah on an advertising hoarding to the gymnasium, but there were no ambulances there either, so they laid her on the pitch and performed CPR again. Eventually, qualified medical staff told them she was dead. Greaves recalled that he closed Sarah’s eyes.

At the end of his evidence, Greaves asked if he could say a few words. A big man with a moustache, overcome with emotion, he then read something he had prepared, to a rapt courtroom. “Just mere words cannot comfort Trevor or Jenni Hicks, or remove their sense of loss, pain and utter devastation,” he said. “But I would like to take this opportunity to say to them that I did my very best for Sarah in the circumstances. I could not have done more. For the time I was with Sarah, Sarah was with someone who cared. Sarah was not alone.”

Greaves and his friend Fred Maddox were police officers, but they were off duty that day. They were there with other police colleagues to support Liverpool football club. They had gone for a drink before the match. They were “fans”. Then when the disaster happened, they did everything citizens could expect of police officers, and of fellow human beings. As with many survivors who gave evidence a generation on, and the families who have endured an unimaginable ordeal, their honesty and humanity shone through.

full article: http://www.theguardian.com/football...-deadly-mistakes-and-lies-that-lasted-decades
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:(
 
Badunk said:
Not knocking you, but this was a common belief when the e-petition was doing the rounds a few years ago: "Yeah, I'll sign it, I hope they get the truth, but I don't think it'll happen." I think those with something to lose will do their damnedest to escape justice, but that it will catch up with them in the end. The families of the victims have a whole city behind them. They'll do it.
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Oh i get you, but what I meant is, regarding individuals. I guess its more of a question then, how would they be held accountable? What are they doing right now?
 
Samid said:
He got absolutely slaughtered in the replies and rightly so. Apparently he is a LFC club ambassador.
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In fairness, considering the timeline, he probably sent the first tweet as soon as his phone got signal when he landed, then saw the news afterwards.
 
Rado_N said:
In fairness, considering the timeline, he probably sent the first tweet as soon as his phone got signal when he landed, then saw the news afterwards.
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It's been all over the news for 24hrs that the jury would give their verdict about 11am today. As a club ambassador, you'd think he'd have known about it
 
Speedy30 said:
It's been all over the news for 24hrs that the jury would give their verdict about 11am today. As a club ambassador, you'd think he'd have known about it
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I think it's understandable if he's just got off a long haul flight and not immediately realised. He was probably barely aware of what time it was.

I'm far from a fan of Michael Owen, but it's not exactly something to crucify him over.
 
Bernard Ingham was asked by reporters this morning if he would apologise to the families; "I have nothing to say," was his response.
 
Frosty said:
The answers to Questions 6 and 7 are crucial. The victims were unlawfully killed, and in no way did their behaviour contribute to their deaths.
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Probably the right decisions and the only response that would be acceptable to Liverpool fans. Glad to see that people will be held accountable.

That said, I find it hard to believe that the action of the Liverpool fans did not contribute to the disaster, I accept they certainly were not the cause. However, those of us who used to frequent away matches during that period know full well that if a gate was opened ticketless fans would rush the opened gate. I think fans who use to go to matches in that period will definitely find that vote strange. I wonder what the ticketless Liverpool fans who tried to get into the stadium that day have had on their mind all these years, did they stop going, have they been scarred?
 
Sepukku said:
I've watched several diagrams of the event and while i don't live in Britain i don't understand one thing. It's clearly the fault of the authorities who let all those people enter that area in those numbers but why, when the stands got crowded why they got crushed? Why they didn't stop entering? Hasn't anyone yelled to stop? Stupid question probably, as they probably did but i still don't understand why they kept pushing.
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The people right at the back had no idea what was happening at the front. The game was still going on and although people at the front were suffocating where they stood, people further back wouldn't have seen it and certainly wouldn't have heard anything in all the noise.

Standing terraces back then were all potential death traps, because people were caged in at the front. There was no room to move at big games. If you were small, you could get lifted off your feet by the people around you and you couldn't do anything about it - your arms would be trapped, too. It's hard to imagine nowadays.
 
SalfordRed1960 said:
Probably the right decisions and the only response that would be acceptable to Liverpool fans. Glad to see that people will be held accountable.

That said, I find it hard to believe that the action of the Liverpool fans did not contribute to the disaster, I accept they certainly were not the cause. However, those of us who used to frequent away matches during that period know full well that if a gate was opened ticketless fans would rush the opened gate. I think fans who use to go to matches in that period will definitely find that vote strange. I wonder what the ticketless Liverpool fans who tried to get into the stadium that day have had on their mind all these years, did they stop going, have they been scarred?
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this is why they are blameless - it went against the police + media + Tory narrative, even way back then.

Taylor Report from 1989

http://www.southyorks.police.uk/sites/default/files/Taylor Interim Report.pdf

Were Fans Without Tickets a Major Factor in the Build-Up?

200. It has become a fact of football life that fans do turn up at all-ticket matches without tickets. It is not
possible to give an accurate figure or even a reliable estimate of the number without tickets on 15 April. Police
estimates varied from about 200 to about 2,000. There were certainly frequent requests for tickets or "spares"
during the hours before the build-up. Many of those warned off by the police were seen to return to the area.
Some were hanging about on the bridge. Again, however, the police witnesses who most impressed me did not
consider the number of ticketless fans to be inordinately large. This accords with two other sources of
evidence.

201. First, there was a wide range of witnesses who observed inside the ground that the Liverpool end was at
a late stage well below capacity save for pens 3 and 4. The north stand still had many empty seats and the wing
pens were sparse. The match being a sell-out, there were clearly many ticket holders to come and they could
account for the large crowd still outside the turnstiles. Had the Liverpool accommodation been full by 2.40
pm, one could have inferred that most or much of the large crowd outside lacked tickets.
202. Secondly, such figures as are available from the Club's electronic monitoring system and from analyses
by the HSE suggest that no great number entered without tickets. They show that the number who passed
through turnstiles A to G plus those who entered through gate C roughly equalled the terrace capacity figure of
10,100 for which tickets had been sold. The Club's record showed 7,038 passed through turnstiles A to G.
However, the counting mechanism on turnstile G was defective, so the HSE did a study using the video film
and projecting figures from the other turnstiles. This gave an assessment of 7,494, with a maximum of 7,644
passing through A to G. Again, using the video, the HSE assessed the number who entered the ground whilst
gate C was open at 2,240 with a maximum of 2,480. Accordingly, the HSE's best estimate of the total entering
through gate C and turnstiles A to G was 9,734 with a maximum of 10,124.1 recognise that these can only be
rough checks because, for example, some with terrace tickets were allowed through turnstiles 1 to 16 and there
would be other similar factors which have not formed part of the assessment. Nevertheless, the figures do
suggest that there was not a very significant body of ticketless fans in the crowd which built up.
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The problem wasn't the numbers - more, where they were all herded.
 
Penna said:
The people right at the back had no idea what was happening at the front. The game was still going on and although people at the front were suffocating where they stood, people further back wouldn't have seen it and certainly wouldn't have heard anything in all the noise.

Standing terraces back then were all potential death traps, because people were caged in at the front. There was no room to move at big games. If you were small, you could get lifted off your feet by the people around you and you couldn't do anything about it - your arms would be trapped, too. It's hard to imagine nowadays.
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Damn, that must have been horrible. :(
 
SalfordRed1960 said:
Probably the right decisions and the only response that would be acceptable to Liverpool fans. Glad to see that people will be held accountable.

That said, I find it hard to believe that the action of the Liverpool fans did not contribute to the disaster, I accept they certainly were not the cause. However, those of us who used to frequent away matches during that period know full well that if a gate was opened ticketless fans would rush the opened gate. I think fans who use to go to matches in that period will definitely find that vote strange. I wonder what the ticketless Liverpool fans who tried to get into the stadium that day have had on their mind all these years, did they stop going, have they been scarred?
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On this I am inclined to agree. I saw plenty of gate rushes and other pretty dangerous antics from ticketless fans back in those days.

Also there was the fact that many grounds had built caged pens across the ends to separate fans.

This was always controversial in my view.

Once in through the central tunnel the fans only had those two pens to go in.

If it wasn't so penned-off then the crowd surge could have been spread across the whole Leppings Lane end and the disaster may have been avoided.

That said cages where a result of terrace violence and pitch invasions which was commonplace everywhere but gained significant billing at Hysel.
 
Neutral said:
this is why they are blameless - it went against the police + media + Tory narrative, even way back then.
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I wasn't apportioning blame, I said contributing. Even with the report you included, seems to confuse number of fans entering with numbers outside. When United went to FA semi-finals you would see an enormous amount of ticketless fans outside the ground, and I am pretty sure it would have been the same for Liverpool and Forest as the allocations for neutral grounds were never big. The culture at that time was also Saturday's was football.

Anyway, glad, or hopefully, it is now all done and dusted.
 
SalfordRed1960 said:
Probably the right decisions and the only response that would be acceptable to Liverpool fans. Glad to see that people will be held accountable.

That said, I find it hard to believe that the action of the Liverpool fans did not contribute to the disaster, I accept they certainly were not the cause. However, those of us who used to frequent away matches during that period know full well that if a gate was opened ticketless fans would rush the opened gate. I think fans who use to go to matches in that period will definitely find that vote strange. I wonder what the ticketless Liverpool fans who tried to get into the stadium that day have had on their mind all these years, did they stop going, have they been scarred?
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I think its like you said though, those scenes happened up and down the country in away matches at the time and yet people did not die up and down the country. Clearly there was something fundamentally different that happened here, a reason why people actually died, for that, I think its fair to say that Liverpool fans actions had no effect whatsoever.
 
NinjaFletch said:
I think its like you said though, those scenes happened up and down the country in away matches at the time and yet people did not die up and down the country. Clearly there was something fundamentally different that happened here, a reason why people actually died, for that, I think its fair to say that Liverpool fans actions had no effect whatsoever.
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Spot on
 
NinjaFletch said:
I think its like you said though, those scenes happened up and down the country in away matches at the time and yet people did not die up and down the country. Clearly there was something fundamentally different that happened here, a reason why people actually died, for that, I think its fair to say that Liverpool fans actions had no effect whatsoever.
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It might be as well to re-word that because they clearly did have an effect. I think what you mean is that the existence of ticketless fans per-se was not the cause of the tragedy.
 
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