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.
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.
Thanks for posting that. Was indeed a good watch.
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.
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.
I 'think' that murder & manslaughter are (sub) categories of unlawful killing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Excellent but so awful.
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.
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.
Assuming it'll be on iPlayer. Will have to watch tomorrow.
Ya I caught it on the IPlayer. A hard watch at times but brilliantly made.
Not yet in full but I intend to. All football fans should.
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.
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 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.
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.
