A major investigation into the 1989 Hillsborough soccer stadium crush which led to the deaths of 97 Liverpool supporters concluded on Tuesday that 12 mostly senior former police officers would have had cases to answer for gross misconduct.
The fans, many of them young, died in an overcrowded, fenced-in enclosure at the ground in Sheffield, northern England, UK, at an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest on a sunny spring afternoon. It was one of the world’s worst stadium disasters.
Police at first blamed the incident on drunken fans, an explanation that was always rejected by survivors, relatives of the victims and the wider Liverpool community who spent years fighting to find out what had happened.
Later inquests and an independent inquiry absolved the fans of any responsibility, concluding the victims had been unlawfully killed and that the police were to blame.
However, no officer has been convicted in subsequent criminal cases with David Duckenfield, the police commander in charge at the match, found not guilty of manslaughter in 2019.
In a report which followed 13 years of investigation into 352 complaints, the UK’s Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) echoed previous findings that fans had not caused the disaster, and found that 327 officer statements had been amended in the aftermath as police tried to deflect blame.
Liverpool’s supporters gather in front the eternal flame of the Hillsborough memorial at Anfield stadium in Liverpool in April 2022. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty
A review of events by the West Midlands Police force shortly after the incident was also flawed with officers biased in favour of their colleagues, the IOPC found.
The IOPC said 12 officers, including South Yorkshire Police’s chief constable Peter Wright, would have had a case to answer for gross misconduct if they were still serving, and that 92 complaints about police actions were upheld or would have required individuals to explain their actions.
However, it found no records that campaigners and victims’ families had their phones bugged or had been put under surveillance, nor that there had been a wider establishment conspiracy.
Victims’ families expressed anger that no action could be taken against any of the officers because they have all retired.
“We’ll never get justice. Nobody’s ever going to go to prison for killing them,” Charlotte Hennessy, whose father Jimmy died in the crush, told reporters.
They said one of the named officers, Norman Bettison, who later became chief constable of Merseyside Police covering Liverpool, should be stripped of his knighthood.
“The unlawful killing of the 97 at Hillsborough 36 years ago is a stain on our nation’s history and today serves as a stark reminder of one of the most significant failings in policing the country has ever seen,” interior minister Shabana Mahmood said. – Reuters
