An investigation into the Hillsborough disaster has found 12 police officers would have faced gross misconduct proceedings for ‘fundamental failures’ and ‘concerted efforts’ to pin blame on Liverpool fans in the aftermath.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct’s (IOPC) report also upheld or found cases to answer for misconduct in 92 complaints about officers. But the law at the time means no officers will face disciplinary proceedings because they had all retired before investigations began.
Beneath the headline findings, here are 11 things we have learned from the IOPC’s report about one of football’s darkest days.
1. The IOPC identifies the source of lies, published in the press, which smeared Liverpool fans and resulted in the Sun’s infamous ‘The Truth’ front page. Two South Yorkshire Police (SYP) officers, Chief Inspector David Sumner and PC Paul Middup, and Sheffield Hallam Conservative MP, Irvine Patnick, began spinning the line. Patnick, who was knighted five years after the Disaster and died in 2012, spread gossip he picked up from a local police social club.
The first paper to run with this was the local Sheffield Star, the IOPC finds. Though Sheffield’s local White’s news agency also used the material, the report says the Sheffield Star ran it first and did not base its story on the agency copy. White’s told the IOPC it did not do much investigative work as the national media had sent its own journalists and didn’t need their input.
But it was the agency copy which national papers picked up. On April 19, four days after the Disaster, The Sun ran its notorious ‘The Truth’ front page. ‘The key difference between The Sun’s coverage and that of other papers was that, rather than couching the stories in the language of allegations, it published them as facts,’ the IOPC states.
Senior SYP officers seemed to sense the seriousness of The Sun coverage. An entry on the police press log on the day of that front page forbade any officer from speaking to the media about Hillsborough without the approval of the Chief Constable.
2. Expert analysis for the IOPC from an expert chartered structural engineer establishes that the safe capacity of the West Terrace of the notorious Leppings Lane end that day should have been 3,089. But 7,200 tickets were sold for the terrace.
3. After crushing incidents at previous FA Cup semi-finals at Hillsborough in the early 1980s, South Yorkshire Police put forward ideas for a re-design of the Leppings Lane entrance in 1985, four years before the Disaster, to make policing matches there easier. Sheffield Wednesday considered the plans but rejected them for cost reasons.
Wednesday prioritised investment in fire safety instead, following the Bradford City fire which killed 56 fans in May 1985. The redesign could have averted disaster and would, at the very least, made the consequences of the Hillsborough Disaster less severe, the IOPC expert found.
4. A change in the way turnstiles were allocated for the 1989 semi-final meant that all 10,100 Liverpool supporters who had standing tickets had to enter through just seven turnstiles – which is 1,443 supporters per turnstile.
There were 42 turnstiles for Nottingham Forest supporters with standing tickets – which is 500 supporters per turnstile. Because each of the turnstiles Liverpool fans passed through could admit a maximum of 750 people per hour, the minimum time needed to get all the supporters in would have been almost two hours of constant operation.
5. Many desperately worried families were unable to get word about their loved ones. The IOPC finds that a ‘Casualty Bureau’ – a telephone contact centre intended to be the hub of information flow to supporters’ families – was overwhelmed, with insufficient telephone lines and resources.
It later emerged that SYP had only ever set one up once before, for a much smaller incident. The telephone numbers supposed to be used for contact between the Bureau and hospitals and police sites were given to the public – meaning there were no dedicated lines.
6. The fateful opening of Leppings Lane ‘Gate C’, which contributed substantially to the crush by funnelling thousands of fans in, may not have been at the command of the match commander, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, as has always been assumed – but instead a decision more casually taken, possibly without authority, by stewards outside it.
The gate was opened at 2.48pm to let a fan out, but between 130 and 180 supporters entered – a small enough number for officers to be able to close the gate again after 30 seconds. The fact that the brief opening of the gate helped reduced the crush may have led a steward to open it again four minutes later. It is unclear whether this was on the instructions of a police officer.
The gate remained open for several minutes this time and more than 2,000 fans entered, to catastrophic effect. Duckenfield’s order that the gate be opened came at the same time, but the IOPC’s evidence suggests no officers acted on that order.
7. The widely reported claim that Liverpool supporters deliberately burned a police horse with cigarettes outside the stadium was not true. Detailed investigation found no evidence to support the claim. When it was put to a key witness, he changed his account of what had happened.
8. There was a 14 per cent reduction in the number of police officers on duty at the Liverpool/Nottingham Forest tie compared with the previous year, when the same teams played each other. In the area where Liverpool supporters arrived, there were 21.6% fewer officers on duty.
Expert former Met Police match commander Douglas Hopkins concluded in his work for the IOPC that the South Yorkshire force had ample resources for policing a semi-final – as long as they were deployed and managed effectively.
9. It had been known that West Midlands Police, tasked with investigating the Disaster, conducted blood alcohol and National Police Computer checks on victims, which the Hillsborough Independent Panel concluded in its 2012 report was done in an attempt to ‘impugn personal reputations.’
The IOPC report finds that the West Midlands force conducted Criminal Records Office checks on no fewer than 94 of those who died. It has found no specific explanation for why and no one has admitted doing this.
10. The IOPC finds no evidence that South Yorkshire Police’s attempts to deflect blame on to fans was related to Freemasonry, or that officers’ actions were undertaken to protect a fellow Freemason. Its investigators used records held by the United Grand Lodge of England to assess the influence of Freemasonry within SYP at the time
11. Professional jealousy prevented match commander Duckenfield getting a proper look around Hillsborough before the semi-final – his first major game he took charge of.
Duckenfield had replaced colleague Brian Mole 19 days earlier but when visiting him in the expectation of a full one-day handover, he told the IOPC he found him reluctant ‘wanting to clear his desk, jealously guarding his relationship.’ Duckenfield watched two Sheffield Wednesday league matches in preparation and told the IOPC he didn’t have any meeting with club officials whilst in the process of doing so.
