Hillsborough Inquests verdict - 96 Unlawfully Killed.

Badunk said:
The families have always given credit to the individual police officers and paramedics who attended to their loved ones. I don't think they're going to target everyone on duty that day.
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I think the anger is at the officers of SYP who were supposedly running operations and West Midlands Police who systematically got bobbies to change their statements through what can only be called bullying.
Watched the documentary about Anne Williams that woman fought to clear her sons name and I am just so sad that she didn't live to see justice prevail. Thank goodness she and the other families didn't give in.
 
SYP as an organisation, directed by senior officers, appear to have systematically lied, committed perjury, attempted to pervert the course of justice, tampered with evidence and tried to blame everyone else but themselves. They deserve everything they get as far as I'm concerned. Whilst there were no doubt individual officers who did all they could (and that has always been accepted by the families as far as I know), and raised their own concerns about the police position, the institution, having already apologised for their behaviour, spent the inquests systematically repeating the earlier take on events - the police force weren't culpable. That's the reason the families are so angry with the current SYP - they repeated the same lies in this inquest that they had peddled for the last 27 years. It appeared they had learnt nothing, and this is the background to the reaction to the ill-advised comments by the retired officers association. Being charitable I'd suggest it wasn't the brightest thing to say. Others (including the families) might go further.
 
Excuse my ignorance, but haven't they been absolved several times over now? I remember reading similar reports in recent years, but perhaps I'm wrong.
 
rio's upper lip said:
Excuse my ignorance, but haven't they been absolved several times over now? I remember reading similar reports in recent years, but perhaps I'm wrong.
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I'm no legal expert, but this was a formal inquest after the findings of the initial inquest were quashed. As such the key thing is the finding of 'unlawful killing' which I think means criminal proceedings can now be initiated. It also means that the fans innocence has now finally been recognised in law. The other areas where it had been said were independent reports etc.
 
Frosty said:


Hillsborough ESPN Documentary - banned from showing in the UK due to the inquest. It will be broadcast on BBC One on 8 May.

Well worth a watch.
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Thanks for posting that. Was indeed a good watch.
 
I do wonder what would have happened if the police had been honest, owned up and took responsibility for mistakes etc. I wonder what the families reaction would have been. I think some of the anger wouldnt have been so heart breaking. If the Police had owned up and took responsibility early on it would have spared the family prolonged grief, the fight to clear their loved ones reputations and lessened the resulting dreadfulness of the whole tragedy.
 
Stack said:
I do wonder what would have happened if the police had been honest, owned up and took responsibility for mistakes etc. I wonder what the families reaction would have been. I think some of the anger wouldnt have been so heart breaking. If the Police had owned up and took responsibility early on it would have spared the family prolonged grief, the fight to clear their loved ones reputations and lessened the resulting dreadfulness of the whole tragedy.
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Me too. At heart, the whole episode seemed a tragedy of poor planning and crowd management. The lies and cover-ups obviously escalated it to a whole institutional crisis.
When you think about the past West Midlands police scandals, it's no wonder so many people have so little faith in either the law or the establishment.
 
lem8sh said:
Anne Williams will be looking down proud as punch, an absolutely remarkable woman.
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I've been thinking of Anne Williams a lot since the verdict came out. Sadly she died three years ago. Would have been great if she was alive to witness Tuesday's verdict come down.
 
For all the criticism that Twitter and Facebook gets, it's fair to say that this kind of cover up wouldn't have been possible in this age of social media.
 
montpelier said:
I 'think' that murder & manslaughter are (sub) categories of unlawful killing.
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The Inquest jury gives the verdict of Unlawful Killing, the Police then investigate and pass their information to the CPS, who decides what the charge will be and who will be charged with what. It depends what charge they think the evidence will support in court to successfully obtain a guilty verdict.
 
Rednotdead said:
The Inquest jury gives the verdict of Unlawful Killing, the Police then investigate and pass their information to the CPS, who decides what the charge will be and who will be charged with what. It depends what charge they think the evidence will support in court to successfully obtain a guilty verdict.
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Yes, which in this case is now in the area of (taken from wiki) this

where a person owes a duty of care ....and is negligent to such a degree that consequently the law regards it as a crime (namely the person has been grossly negligent) and that person causes the victim to die, he may be liable for gross negligent manslaughter. The defendants in such cases are often people carrying out jobs that require special skills or care, such as doctors, teachers, police or prison officers, or electricians, who fail to meet the standard which could be expected from a reasonable person of the same profession. In R v Bateman[11] the Court of Criminal Appeal held that gross negligence manslaughter involved the following elements:

the defendant owed a duty to the deceased to take care;
the defendant breached this duty;
the breach caused the death of the deceased; and
the defendant's negligence was gross, that is, it showed such a disregard for the life and safety of others as to amount to a crime and deserve punishment.
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montpelier said:
I 'think' that murder & manslaughter are (sub) categories of unlawful killing.
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Rednotdead said:
The Inquest jury gives the verdict of Unlawful Killing, the Police then investigate and pass their information to the CPS, who decides what the charge will be and who will be charged with what. It depends what charge they think the evidence will support in court to successfully obtain a guilty verdict.
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montpelier said:
Yes, which in this case is now in the area of (taken from wiki) this
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Many thanks guys!
 
It's hard to think of anything at all on the scale of this.

On the face of it it's 96 innocent lives lost in a crush at a football match but the systematic cover-up and smear campaign by the government, the police, the media? It went right up to Thatcher, straight away. She owed the police force for Orgreave so she gave them a pat on the back for Hillsborough and these poor fans were trapped in the deal.

How on earth are we supposed to trust anybody in power, even now when we have people like Andy Burnham who have done an excellent job in getting it to where it is, the institutionalisation of people in high places to be able to blame those at the bottom of the food chain is astonishing in the scale of it when you think about it. There is nothing even remotely comparable to what's happened since that day in April 1989.

It's remarkable that throughout all of this the families have remained united and strong, the city of Liverpool has remained united and strong and they've lived (sadly Anne Williams never got to see the day) to see the right thing finally done.

Now it'll be of the greatest of importance and interest to see just who the government decides to throw under the bus for this. Duckenfield and Bettison surely have to go to prison but how many others? Will anyone actually go to prison?

I think if the right people aren't held responsible for this and sentenced to prison regardless of their age or health then there'll be a massive revolt from the people of this country and rightly so.

Justice for the 96 hasn't yet been served. They've got the truth, but now we need to see people pay for what they did, all the way to the top.

I swear to god as well, any match going fan on here, if anyone sings the 'without killing anyone' or 'murderers' chant and tries to justify it with Heysel whilst watching us play, fecking lamp them. Absolutely muller them.
 
The next stage of all this will be interesting. People need to understand that any criminal process that follows may not be successful. The burden of proof in the inquiry (civil) is based on the balance of probabilities. The threshold in court (criminal) is beyond all reasonable doubt.

Irrespective of this out come those identified may still be found not guilty of offences if the evidence can not attribute blame in line with the criminal burden of proof.

I fear this may rumble on for years more.
 
KM said:
For all the criticism that Twitter and Facebook gets, it's fair to say that this kind of cover up wouldn't have been possible in this age of social media.
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Unfortunately, I think you're mistaken. The lesson from all this is whoever wins the first round of the media battle holds the high ground. The police have held the high ground in so many cases where tragedy has occured. The SYP during the miners' strike were already behaving like the force behind a dictatorship. It may sound trivial but the SYP blocked all motorway exits for large stretches in an attempt to shut support from the miners, regardless of other people or emergencies. They had imposed a culture of policing in society that was totally unacceptable. Trying to report that to the media was impossible because the police had already secured the media 'in the public interest'. The level of police power was greatly increased by the Thatcher government and there was little opposition to their methods. In the age of social media the glare of publicity simply drives security institutions to adopt sophisticated media statements and to immediately take a stand of self justification. Every police force employs spin doctors, thanks to Tony Blair. This case also exposes the absence of good investigative journalism to correct the original reporting, which has also declined in an age when traditional newspapers are in decline. Remeber the old adage: there is no greater loss of public rights than that after a ruling against the police.
 
Stretford End Phil said:
Unfortunately, I think you're mistaken. The lesson from all this is whoever wins the first round of the media battle holds the high ground. The police have held the high ground in so many cases where tragedy has occured. The SYP during the miners' strike were already behaving like the force behind a dictatorship. It may sound trivial but the SYP blocked all motorway exits for large stretches in an attempt to shut support from the miners, regardless of other people or emergencies. They had imposed a culture of policing in society that was totally unacceptable. Trying to report that to the media was impossible because the police had already secured the media 'in the public interest'. The level of police power was greatly increased by the Thatcher government and there was little opposition to their methods. In the age of social media the glare of publicity simply drives security institutions to adopt sophisticated media statements and to immediately take a stand of self justification. Every police force employs spin doctors, thanks to Tony Blair. This case also exposes the absence of good investigative journalism to correct the original reporting, which has also declined in an age when traditional newspapers are in decline. Remeber the old adage: there is no greater loss of public rights than that after a ruling against the police.
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I can see what you are saying but you've just provided another example pre social media which doesn't prove anything when the poster stated he didn't think this would be possible in the current day.
 
TheReligion said:
I can see what you are saying but you've just provided another example pre social media which doesn't prove anything when the poster stated he didn't think this would be possible in the current day.
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If I'm not mistaken, even within the age of social media it was only the families of the 96 and their determination and resilience that over came inertia leading to an open investigation and a fully open inquiry.

Maybe in 25 years we will learn the truth of why Britain really went to war against Iraq, or why the police didn't investigate Jimmy Saville while he was still alive, or the police failure to investigate young female grooming as recently as 2013, or the failure to investigate City fraud during the 2008 collapse, or even the police' ongoing questionable behaviour towards young ethnic males, and possibly the conspiracy within the political establishment that employed coroners and Justices to quash an open investigation of Hillsborough.

I guess it all depends on a person's age and experience but more social media in my opinion hasn't led to better investigative journalism or a massive correction to the volumes of miscarriages of justice.
 
Stretford End Phil said:
If I'm not mistaken, even within the age of social media it was only the families of the 96 and their determination and resilience that over came inertia leading to an open investigation and a fully open inquiry.

Maybe in 25 years we will learn the truth of why Britain really went to war against Iraq, or why the police didn't investigate Jimmy Saville while he was still alive, or the police failure to investigate young female grooming as recently as 2013, or the failure to investigate City fraud during the 2008 collapse, or even the police' ongoing questionable behaviour towards young ethnic males, and possibly the conspiracy within the political establishment that employed coroners and Justices to quash an open investigation of Hillsborough.

I guess it all depends on a person's age and experience but more social media in my opinion hasn't led to better investigative journalism or a massive correction to the volumes of miscarriages of justice.
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I think people have to realise that standards in everything were different in days gone by. I'm not saying that was right but since the introduction of PACE in 1984 investigations have been more open and the Police more accountable.

I wouldn't say it is unfair to judge old investigations by today's standards but I would say it is naive to not accept the quality and accountability will be harder to find.
 
Watching the documentary right now, it's excellent.
 
Stack said:
I do wonder what would have happened if the police had been honest, owned up and took responsibility for mistakes etc. I wonder what the families reaction would have been. I think some of the anger wouldnt have been so heart breaking. If the Police had owned up and took responsibility early on it would have spared the family prolonged grief, the fight to clear their loved ones reputations and lessened the resulting dreadfulness of the whole tragedy.
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I think it would certainly have been forgotten, or least, be less memorable an occasion in the modern day. The whole 'Justice' campaign has kept the incident in the public domain for this amount of time. The grief felt would have been the same, but maybe they'd have had closure before now.

I did read an interesting post be a former PC from SYP who was on the ground at Hillsborough on that frightful day, who calls from responsibility from football fans as a whole. Essentially saying that the idea of penning fans in (which was obviously quite dangerous) was actually very much necessary owing to the behaviour of fans over the years. This point will be lost though in the rather unfortunately generalised assault on 'the Police' rather than the incompetent command.
 
Richard Cranium said:
I think it would certainly have been forgotten, or least, be less memorable an occasion in the modern day. The whole 'Justice' campaign has kept the incident in the public domain for this amount of time. The grief felt would have been the same, but maybe they'd have had closure before now.

I did read an interesting post be a former PC from SYP who was on the ground at Hillsborough on that frightful day, who calls from responsibility from football fans as a whole. Essentially saying that the idea of penning fans in (which was obviously quite dangerous) was actually very much necessary owing to the behaviour of fans over the years. This point will be lost though in the rather unfortunately generalised assault on 'the Police' rather than the incompetent command.
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Yes its a difficult one. Fan violence etc back then was pretty common and the penning in of fans was one way the authorities tried to deal with it. In hindsight they got it wrong. I guess the big issue thats kept it all going is that the Police and Authorities were not honest about what went wrong.
 
Saw it two years ago, and it was shown again very recently here and it's harrowing.
 
lem8sh said:
Anyone catch the documentary on BBC tonight? As powerful a watch as I've come across in years.
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Not yet in full but I intend to. All football fans should.

I think it's Tony Evans of the Times (great guy) who appears in a clip describing someone coming up to him and asking about the looting of the dead.

He just asked backed "would you do it?" Person shakes head... Tony gets very angry... "then why would you think I did"

I really respect that man. Has an eyewitness angle of Heysel too (not pretty - not on this show I'm sure). But you just know he speaks the truth.
 
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I saw the documentary, powerful, sad and compelling viewing.How the hell did they think they could get away with such a cover up? How did they get away with it for so long? Absolutely shameful.
 
The Brown Bull said:
I saw the documentary, powerful, sad and compelling viewing.How the hell did they think they could get away with such a cover up? How did they get away with it for so long? Absolutely shameful.
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The fact that the Spurs semi there had problems, but the guy in charge let them climb over and sit quietly round the pitch because he knew there would be problems if he hadn't. Then god help those poor souls the next year he got removed from the job because some of his men played a silly joke. Christ this is scary. :(
 
lem8sh said:
Anyone catch the documentary on BBC tonight? As powerful a watch as I've come across in years.
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It was brilliant. Strangely, some of the most harrowing/moving moments are the ones you don't expect. One of them was the initial verdict. Just seeing the bewildered, defeated looks of the families was quite difficult.

The other was at the 2009 memorial service, where Burnham was speaking, but was soon drowned out by the fans and he kind of gave that mutual look of respect that more had to be done.
 
I'm half way through the documentary and it's absolutely heartbreaking. You really take for granted how safe it is to attend nowadays, I simply can't imagine the horror of being in the middle of one of those pens at 3pm.

It's incredibly interesting and I'd seriously recommend giving it a watch, but be prepared for some harrowing footage and stories.
 
Cheesy said:
It was brilliant. Strangely, some of the most harrowing/moving moments are the ones you don't expect. One of them was the initial verdict. Just seeing the bewildered, defeated looks of the families was quite difficult.

The other was at the 2009 memorial service, where Burnham was speaking, but was soon drowned out by the fans and he kind of gave that mutual look of respect that more had to be done.
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I agree... but I would say that his look to me resembled more like a look of shame that thing had gotten to this point.
 
Watched this last night and found it very emotive. Really hit home the pain it caused the families of the victims and what they have been through, as well as others involved.

As for the high ranking police, government officials, and media................
 
The BBC documentary also gives a sense of why the obvious thing for fans to do as the gates were opened was to walk straight through the central tunnel. It was also the first time I'd heard that pre-match recording of John Motson for example, where he's talking off air saying it's strange how the terrace is being filled up in the centre but there was still a lot of space wide. That was when someone who knew the ground could still have fixed things. So many missed opportunities.

Richard Cranium said:
I did read an interesting post be a former PC from SYP who was on the ground at Hillsborough on that frightful day, who calls from responsibility from football fans as a whole. Essentially saying that the idea of penning fans in (which was obviously quite dangerous) was actually very much necessary owing to the behaviour of fans over the years. This point will be lost though in the rather unfortunately generalised assault on 'the Police' rather than the incompetent command.
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The pens were a dangerous response to a problem. Hillsborough itself had already had the warning of how dangerous a response when the police struggled to open gates to evacuate fans to the pitch edge at the Spurs semi. There was no way to escape by moving fans sideways away from the goal towards the corners. Once the stadium was allowed (encouraged?) to take a design decision like that then the management has to be perfect to make each pen load correctly.

It wasn't one man's mistake, his response was symptomatic of the treatment of fans in that era, another error in a chain of them. It's because it wasn't just one bad few minutes when the police command failed that the cover-up that followed was so aggressive and so complete.
 
jojojo said:
The BBC documentary also gives a sense of why the obvious thing for fans to do as the gates were opened was to walk straight through the central tunnel. It was also the first time I'd heard that pre-match recording of John Motson for example, where he's talking off air saying it's strange how the terrace is being filled up in the centre but there was still a lot of space wide. That was when someone who knew the ground could still have fixed things. So many missed opportunities.



The pens were a dangerous response to a problem. Hillsborough itself had already had the warning of how dangerous a response when the police struggled to open gates to evacuate fans to the pitch edge at the Spurs semi. There was no way to escape by moving fans sideways away from the goal towards the corners. Once the stadium was allowed (encouraged?) to take a design decision like that then the management has to be perfect to make each pen load correctly.

It wasn't one man's mistake, his response was symptomatic of the treatment of fans in that era, another error in a chain of them. It's because it wasn't just one bad few minutes when the police command failed that the cover-up that followed was so aggressive and so complete.
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The police commander from that game had allowed the fans to climb over and sit round the pitch, a sensible option. He had dealt with a number of these games and had then pissed off his superiors (through no fault of his own) and was removed to another area. Why were there no stewards inside the ground to divert fans? In a lot of cases police took it on themselves to do something to help the fans with no help from their superiors. Then the same policemen made honest statements on what they felt was wrong on the day and had their statement altered by same superiors. If the bosses at SYP had held their hands up and admitted they had not run the operation properly those families would have been saved years of heartache and having the loved ones reputations dragged through the mud and survivors suffering years of guilt that they were to blame when deep down they knew they were innocent. David Duckenfield needs to be punished for what he did to those families.
 
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