Hillsborough The truth at last

Kev. Re the alteration of Statements, can you clarify this, ie, Witness Statements, or the Statements made by the Officers concerned?.
The reason I ask is that should it have been a Witness Statement by a member of the public, then if it has been altered by the Officer taking it, and the witness wishes to alter or add any other further information, he has to, at the bottom of his statement write, I, Joe Bloggs, wish to alter and add the following to my statement.(I cannot remember the exact wording after all this time)The witness then signs the statement.
However, if the Officer was making a statement for Police work evidence, he would have written the account in his Pocket Book, he could, then, if the case went to Court, ask the Judge, if he may refresh his memory from his Pocket Book, however, once he has done this request, the Judge can ask the Officer to hand him his pocket book to read.Also, as the defence briefs could.
IF, the Officer had made any changes to the entry of the case in his pocket book, he would have had to draw a line through the evidence he had entered, initial, the crossed out wording and then, if there was room on the same line, enter the alteration.but I believe the entry would be too long to do, without it being blatently obviouse.
My take on this is that these Officers concerned were told be a higher Senior Officer, to make a new statement, (Not a pocket book entry, so the Officer could memorise the new statement, in the hope he would NOT have to ask the Judge if he may refere to his pocket book, knowing it would read totaly different to the statement he had re written.
In those days, you lived under the threat, that if you didn’t do as you were told, you would be moved from where you were serving, to the far flung end of the County, you can imagine, if your wife was working, and you had children, and at school, what trouble this would cause the officer concerned.
I cannot believe, how the Police Officer who has just come forward, didn’t know his statement, which he would have to have been signed, didn’t know his statement had been altered.
Judges, in my experience do not take Perjery very kindly in their Courts, indeed, many take that as a worse Crime than the one they are trying.
I think a lot of Sgts and higher ranking Officers, serving or retired, must be shaking in their boots at this present time.

Jim.
Lincoln .7

C D.

At the end of the day, people don’t expect their loved ones to go to a football match and never return. As for blame?

You are of course correct. The blame starts with the FA who apparently insisted that the game go ahead at Hillsborough under threat of forefeiture of the game should Liverpool Football Club decide not to play on safety grounds. Discovering who within the FA is actually to blame would probably require yet another enquiry.

Sheffield Wednesday Football Club and Sheffield City Council also bear responsibility for allowing the game to go ahead without the relevant safety authorisations.

The Police Officers who were responsible for both crowd control and crowd safety bear responsibility too. It seems those in authority either lost control of the situation, or, perhaps even worse, were guilty of allowing the situation to escalate.

The culpability of both the Police Officers on the ground and the Ambulance personnel is questionable. They were badly led, perhaps even misled, by those in authority. It seems they were encouraged to treat the pitch invasion as an example of disorder rather than realising it was a desperate attempt to escape a rapidly deteriorating situation.

The fans hold some responsibility due to the reputation for crowd problems as evidenced at Heysel. Having said that, the instruction to arrive no more than fifteen minutes before kick off was no fault of the fans. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

More sinister perhaps is the concerted efforts by the Police not only to cover up their own incompetence by the systematic altering of statements without the knowledge of the Officers who wrote them, but also to take deliberate steps to smear the Liverpool fans, including those who died. Is it any wonder that not only the families of the 96 who died, but almost the entire population of Liverpool (and wider) are horrified by the extent of the betrayal by those who were there not only to maintain law and order but to ensure safety.

And lastly some elements of the press who were only too eager to vilify the population of a whole city rather than investigate the actual course, and causes, of the event. Didn’t someone once say never let the truth get in the way of a good story?

Blame? Don’t worry, there’s plenty to go around.

Regards,

kev35

What worries me about all the calls for ‘justice’ over Hillsborough is that I’ve never once heard anybody say that the Football Association, Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield Council or (God forbid!) Liverpool Football Club should be facing prosecution; the whole thing seems to be polarised on typically political lines…..Liverpool versus the Police / Thatcher!

I am not saying that the Police were not guilty of tampering with statements or instigating a cover-up; that is a known fact. That should certainly be investigated and maybe prosecutions should be made (although I’m not sure on what charge).

What I am saying is, if we really are interested in ‘justice’ then all those who were actually responsible for the deaths should face possible prosecution. Specifically those within the Football Association, Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield Council and Liverpool Football Club who knew the ground was dangerous, and apparently they did, and yet allowed the game to go-ahead anyway.

So I understood…..but don’t you think that others, not the Police, are at least equally responsible for the disaster?
__________________
WA$.

Yes I do, from the politicians of the day and since that have seemed to have colluded with the cover up down, yes the fans played a role in this, but only because the situation was allowed to get that far.. Something that shouldn’t of happened and should have been prevented, I see there was some discussion over someone’s knighthood and I think that should be stripped from him as well.
It’s up taken some time to come out and I congratulate this Government on allowing it too, but those that were responsible should be punished, regardless of the time period or positions they may or did hold.

I suggest you Google ‘mindless football violence UK 1970 – 1990”

Your answer lies therein.

Moggy

The picture at the top says it all 🙁

http://www.squidoo.com/hooligans

Oh, please let’s not turn this into an argument about politics / class / religion! :rolleyes:

While ‘drunken rabble’ isn’t a scientific term that I’m aware of I am a little concerned that the latest reports on the disaster seem to be saying that alcohol consumption had no bearing on the disaster.

I know I’m on dangerous territory here so before I start I will make one thing clear: I do not think that any alcohol that may (or may not) have been consumed by any of the ninety-six Liverpool fans that died had any bearing on their deaths.

However, having said that, the official line now seems to be that no alcohol consumed by any Liverpool fan had any bearing on the disaster. Can that be true? Let us look at those outside the ground; those that were let in when ‘Gate C’ was opened. Are we really saying that several thousand football fans, who were predominantly young men, turned up for a match at 15:00 and none of them had had a couple of pints beforehand?

No, ‘a couple of pints’ wouldn’t turn them into a ‘drunken rabble’ but are we now actually saying that it wouldn’t have impaired their judgement in any way? Would we have been happy for them to drive after ‘a couple of pints’? What about after three pints?

Calling them a ‘drunken rabble’ is an injustice but by saying that alcohol had no effect on the disaster it seems, to me, that the pendulum of justice has swung too far back the other way.

Start with the FA, they allocated the ground which was already regarded as unsafe, they allocated the Leppings Lane end with the worst access to the largest number of fans.

As far as criticism of the Police is concerned, the faults and organisation was lacking from the top, in reality the bosses put the ordinary rank and file copper in an impossible situation.

Policemen out there with no radios or any means of contact with control, working blind knowing that there was a problem but with no idea of the scale of that problem.

Only today an ex-policeman has come forward because he has only now discovered that his statement to the Taylor Enquiry was altered without his knowledge.

The establishment from Thatcher on down waged a propaganda campaign against the fans and even against the city of Liverpool, revealing, that the statements made by “the drunken rabble”:mad: returning to Liverpool are now found to be true and accurate.

So I understood…..but don’t you think that others, not the Police, are at least equally responsible for the disaster?

Those giving that evidence will have sworn such an oath, and by modifying the evidence they perverted the course of that justice, who is to say if the evidence had not been tampered with that senior officers and their underlings at the time would not have faced charges… There is only one reason to alter evidence and that is to protect ones self or ones collegues from such a result.

It is written to infer they would possibly have been prosecuted.

Creaking, you are going to quote me, quote me in full and not just cherry pick parts of a sentence to make it sound as if I am saying something else.

My apologies; it was not my intention to misrepresent you.

You only mentioned ‘senior officers and their underlings’ would not have faced charges following the Hillsborough Disaster so I took that to mean that these were the only people (the Police) that you believed as having any responsibility for the deaths on the day. I do not think my selective quoting changed that.

Again, I apologise if that is a misrepresentation.

The police are certainly not alone in this.

And, to my mind, the police do not bear the greatest responsibility for the tragedy…

…Hillsborough was a disaster ‘waiting to happen’!

The ground was inherently dangerous and had been the scene of previous crushes in 1981 (FA Cup semi-final – 38 injured), 1987 and 1988. The only access to the two fenced-in enclosures was through a wide tunnel, down a one-in-six slope and directly opposite ‘Gate C’. The ‘crush-barriers’ were also (known to be) sub-standard.

Certainly LFC were aware of this because they tried to get the venue changed ‘on safety grounds’, the FA were aware of this because they refused to change the venue (on pain of forfeiting the game) and Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield Council were aware of this because of the refused safety certificate.

So, as you say, ‘the ground was regarded as unsafe even by the standards of the day’; any one of the organisations above could have prevented this disaster yet the game was allowed to go ahead, why?

The allocation of tickets was also inherently dangerous; once through the turnstiles the fans were free to select anywhere they liked within the part of the ground allocated to Liverpool. Together with the stadium design this surely led to a dangerous number of fans ending-up behind the goal at the Leppings Lane end.

The advice to fans about timing their arrival was also inherently dangerous; advice to arrive fifteen minutes before kick-off for an FA Cup Semi-Final at a ground with known problems of access led to an urgency as fans missed the kick-off. This urgency coupled to the poor design of the stands contributed greatly to the tragedy but the kick-off wasn’t delayed, why? Was the fact that the game was being televised live a factor I wonder?

The urgency of the fans to enter the ground before kick-off, and the increased urgency when fans realised that they had missed the kick-off, was also a contributory factor in opening ‘Gate C’.

And the mistaken opening of ‘Gate C’ was the final piece in the jigsaw that made this potential disaster a certainty.

…it was actually fans calling to Liverpool players, who in turn called the referee before anyone grasped what was happening.

I have somewhat less sympathy for criticism of the Police or Ambulance Service response after the disaster had begun; it is easy to criticise with the benefit of hindsight but on the ground, on the day, things must have unfolded at terrifying speed and those making the fateful decisions did not have the sort-of ‘omnipresence’ that we benefit from now. Nobody was deliberately trying to make this a disaster!

I think I saw the Hillsborough Disaster live on TV and seem to remember the television commentators, at first, also assuming that they were watching ‘crowd-trouble’ rather that a ‘crush’; they had a pretty good view and I’m sure nobody is claiming that they were part of some ‘anti-Liverpool’ conspiracy at that stage.

Creaking, you are going to quote me, quote me in full and not just cherry pick parts of a sentence to make it sound as if I am saying something else.

Yes, of course; as in a previous post (#30) where I tried to approach the taboo subject of apportioning some blame to football ‘fans’ who weren’t there on the day.

… why were there fences in the first place?

I suggest you Google ‘mindless football violence UK 1970 – 1990“

Your answer lies therein.

Moggy

The thing that annoys me is that for years and years people had the opportunity to have their voice heard and say what actually happened with the police statements -they chose for what ever reason to remain silent.
All of this cast a shadow over Liverpool which wasn’t deserved -what is wrong in all this is that if people had told the truth all those years ago people would have accepted that mistakes were made and that the police made errors as much as anyone else . However for whatever reason they decided to take the opposite route and put a lot of blame on the fans. Clearly not all
fans were blameless -however to tarnish all the fans and a city in an attempt
to deflect blame beggars belief.

They shouldn’t be; nobody should be…..but are you saying that the Police are the only ones who bear any responsibility?

No I’m not.
However, the changing of Police reports must be their responsibilty.
To my mind that’s the bad part of this.
The events on the day may well have been chaotic, the individuals under immense pressure to try and act, and mistakes may well have been made and I don’t happen to think that any constable (or any other Police official) on duty that day would have wanted the deaths of all those people.

But the attempted act of pushing the blame onto people who were killed attending a game of association football is to say the least shabby, and at worst criminal–and I still think the establishment will protect it’s own, and the people responsible for that act will escape–probably to a retirement home in the Sun, without justice ever being served.

…..but are you saying that the Police are the only ones who bear any responsibility?

The police are certainly not alone in this.

Before the match LFC tried to get the game moved to another venue over safety fears, as a last resort asked that Liverpool fans be given the other end of the ground which has better access.

Hillsborough safety certification had been refused by Sheffield Council, the ground was regarded as unsafe even by the standards of that time, but of course the suits at the FA know best don’t they?.

The local police knew or should have known the sort of problems of passing a large number of fans through antiquated turnstiles and into a very restricted entrance to the stadium all passageways leading directly to just one part of the ground, no attempt was made to direct fans to other parts which were allocated to Liverpool fans.

The police outside should have held fans into queues leading to each entrance, but allowed the fans to congregate around the entrance en-masse, then the man “in charge” gave the instruction to open the exit gates and just let the fans pour in without any direction, net result all were funnelled into just one area with the inevitable horrible results.

From now on in the police in charge are wholly responsible, the ordinary copper has been left with an impossible job, then even as the disaster occurred again those in charge wrongly assessed the situation and took decisions which made the situation worse rather than better, “refusing to open the pens or let ambulances in”, it was actually fans calling to Liverpool players, who in turn called the referee before anyone grasped what was happening.

Then of course came the blame game, the vilification of fans and even the city of Liverpool with the lies that we are now all to aware of.

I see Bettison while making a sort of apology is still trying to apportion blame to the fans outside the ground, mind you he took the job of Chief Constable on Merseyside and was made very welcome:rolleyes:, probably has no great memories of Liverpool.

Sadly though I doubt those that deserve being pulled into court…..ever will be.

I agree.

As we all begin to see (and realise) the Police in this country are above the law.

They shouldn’t be; nobody should be…..but are you saying that the Police are the only ones who bear any responsibility?

Read the report, they have been absolved of blame. In what way did they contribute to the events that unfolded at Hillsborough? All they did was attend a football match.

Yes, the report (or reports) were very careful not to attach any blame to the fans at Hillsborough that day, especially the ninety-six that died or any of those that were injured but what about one of the primary causes of the disaster; the fences that the fans were pinned-against?

This was kind-of a question that was answered in the original enquiry without ever actually being asked because the fences were removed from all United Kingdom football grounds following the Hillsborough disaster. If the fences were not one cause of the disaster why remove them? The question that didn’t get asked was why were there fences in the first place? Some fans (and, just to be clear, I stress not any of the fans at Hillsborough that day) cannot be totally absolved of any blame for the disaster.

And, although I do not want to make a direct connection, Liverpool fans had been guilty of causing one of the worst incidents in European football when thirty-nine Juventus fans died and over five-hundred were injured in a crush at the Heysel Stadium in Belgium in 1985, only four years before Hillsborough.

The fences were there for a reason (not just for Liverpool fans) and, in my view, some football ‘fans’ bear a very heavy responsibility for the Hillsborough disaster but I doubt we’ll see any of them in the dock in the search for ‘justice’.

Creaking door you are missing the point, evidence was tampered with…

Well, I hope I haven’t missed the point; I’ve said that the cover-up should be investigated and, for me anyway, the most important thing is to assess if the tampering with evidence could have obscured the true cause of the disaster. If this were the case then the course-of-justice was truly perverted because the correct lessons may not have been learned and another preventable tragedy could have occurred. There is no doubt that there is a case to answer however we must also be cautious…

…senior officers and their underlings at the time would not have faced charges…

…because it seems that you’ve already made up your mind, as have many others probably, as to who should have ‘faced charges’. As I’ve stressed above, in my view, those responsible for the cover-up are not necessarily those primarily responsible for the deaths of the ninety-six fans.

And if we’re going to abide by the law, and I agree that we should, aren’t the defendants innocent until proven guilty?