Lies and cover-ups
Even as bodies lay strewn across the pitch, senior officers sought ways to steer clear of the blame
FOR the first time since 96 Liverpool fans died at an FA Cup semi-final match in 1989, their families can hope to see public prosecutions against individuals and organisations.
The Crown Prosecution Service is expected to be given a file later this year by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and Operation Resolve, which undertook a joint £80 million investigation, to consider charges that could include manslaughter, negligence and perverting the course of justice.
Evidence given during the two-year inquest will form part of any case brought against police officers, South Yorkshire Police, the Football Association and Sheffield Wednesday FC.
Stadium engineers, Sheffield City Council and the ambulance service could also face corporate charges.
Police chief who told the truth for the ‘first time’
Ever since the disastrous events of April 15, 1989, one man has been blamed above all others: David Duckenfield, the former South Yorkshire chief superintendent who was the match commander that day.
It was his decision at 2.52pm to open an exit gate next to overcrowded turnstiles at Hillsborough stadium that led to Liverpool fans pouring on to the terraces at the Leppings Lane end, causing the suffocating crush.
Now aged 71, Mr Duckenfield admitted he had not been entirely honest when he gave evidence to previous inquires, but that he had now decided to tell the “whole truth”.
Newly promoted and inexperienced at the time, he accepted he was “not the best man for the job” and that he “froze” as he tried to handle the crisis.
It had been a “serious mistake”, he said, to take over responsibility for the match just 15 days beforehand, and he signed off on a “hopeless” operational plan that put on duty 177 fewer officers than for previous semi-finals.
He said he was “overcome by the enormity of the situation” and his mind went blank. If he had closed the gates to a tunnel leading to the terrace, allowing fans into an inner courtyard but without access to the terrace, he could have alleviated the overcrowding outside without endangering fans already in the ground.
His failure to do so was “a blunder of the first magnitude”, he admitted.
Asked if that decision was the “direct cause” of the 96 deaths, he said: “Yes, sir.” Mr Duckenfield was a freemason; asked if his promotion to chief superintendent, which came “out of the blue”, was linked to freemasonry, he said: “I wouldn’t know, sir, but I would hope not.”
Supt Roger Marshall, who was stationed outside the turnstiles, repeatedly asked for the gate to be opened, saying someone would be “killed” if it was not. He told the inquest of his “profound regret” that he did not request kick-off to be delayed.
The cover-up
The inquest heard that a police coverup hiding the real cause of the tragedy began even as victims lay dying.
Mr Duckenfield accepted that when the-then FA chief executive, Graham Kelly, came into the police control room, he had lied about the crush, saying fans had forced a gate open.
He said: “That was a terrible lie.” South Yorkshire Police then shifted the blame from its own officers to Liverpool fans, who were smeared as drunks trying to get in without tickets.
Former Det Supt Graham McKay, who was the first senior investigating officer on the scene, ordered his officers not to make notes in their pocketbooks and instead to write up their recollections on plain pieces of paper. Officers’ statements were then sent to a solicitor, who “sanitised” them to remove criticism of the police, according to barristers for the victims’ families.
‘Concocted story’
The dead, including children, had their blood alcohol levels taken and pubs were visited by officers gathering statements.
Sir Norman Bettison, a South Yorkshire chief inspector who went on to become chief constable of Merseyside Police, is alleged to have told a student in a pub in May 1989: “We’re going to try and concoct a story that all of the Liverpool fans were drunk and that we were afraid they were going to break down the gates so we decided to open them.” Mr Bettison denied this.
A fatal oversight
The police operational order for the match was hopelessly inadequate, the inquest heard.
Ch Insp David Beal, one of the officers who wrote the document, accepted there should have been “contingency” to cater for a build-up of fans. He said a tactic of police blocking off the tunnel leading into the central pens should have featured in the order.
The year before, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest had met at Hillsborough in another FA Cup semifinal. On that occasion fans were turned away from the central pens by police officers blocking the tunnel.
The ‘unsafe’ terraces
Sheffield Wednesday FC was accused of failing to ensure safety. The club’s official capacity for the Leppings Lane terraces was 10,100, but stadium expert John Cutlack calculated the safe capacity to be just 7,725.
Seven of the 13 crush barriers in pens three and four, where the disaster unfolded, did not meet regulations, said Mr Cutlack, and were so old that a 58year-old newspaper was found rolled up inside a collapsed crush barrier.
Twelve turnstiles were closed on match day, meaning 24,200 Liverpool fans had to enter through 23 turnstiles, while 29,800 Nottingham Forest supporters were able to use 60 turnstiles.
Two ambulance personnel usually sat in the South Stand for league matches so they could be the “eyes and ears” of the ambulance control room, but the club sold the tickets for their seats. The FA also faces questions.
Did council sleep on the job?
The stadium had a safety certificate from 1979 and was regularly inspected by South Yorkshire Police and Sheffield City Council, as well as by the club’s consultant structural engineer Dr Wilfred Eastwood. Mr Cutlack said the inspection regime of the ground throughout the 1980s had presented opportunities to reassess the pens’ capacity, which were missed.
The jury heard that Insp Clive Calvert, then a football liaison officer, had sketched out a plan to redesign the Leppings Lane turnstiles. In a statement dated May 19 1989, he wrote: “In 1984, I and other officers realised that, after Sheffield Wednesday returned to Division One, problems were evident due to an increase in away fans.
“I suggested that the whole of the Leppings Lane turnstiles should be demolished with new ones built parallel and near the rear of the stand, with access to individual pens.” Mr Calvert said club secretary Richard Chester saw the plans and “came forward with a compromise”. As history showed, it proved inadequate.
Ambulance men ‘slow to react’
Four South Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service officers were inside the ground. Station Officer Paul Eason and qualified ambulanceman Stephen Chippendale were the first from SYMAS to go to the Leppings Lane end. They walked between the pens and the goal, but said they did not notice fans being crushed against the fence at the front.
Mr Eason declared a major incident at 3.22pm after helping to treat one of the fans who died.
Albert Page, who was SYMAS’s chief ambulance officer, accepted that Mr Eason took “too long” to make that declaration and that he “had not done an adequate initial assessment”.
In contrast, Philip Saxton, who was at the match with St John Ambulance, described how he watched fans at the front of the pens deteriorating in the crush. He jumped into the pens at 3.12pm, and tried to give first aid to casualties he could reach.