UKC

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/apr/03/hillsborough-jury-fails-to-...

Oh, great. And now the prosecution wants *another* three month trial.

Money, to coin a phrase, spaffed  up the wall. Will this  nonsense *never* be over?

jcm

Why is this nonsense?

I assume you are therefore not interested in justice for the 96 people who died?  In my view the cost of a re-trial pales into insignificance to those lives lost, the still ongoing pain of their families and friends and all the emotional suffering of the people who went through the horror on the day.

Innocent question. What is it that you think this guy did that warrants a criminal conviction?

From what I gather he made an error of judgement possibly due to inexperience.

I think it is fair that a jury decides whether the deaths were due to gross negligence on the part of Duckenfield.  It is fair to both Duckenfield himself and the families of those who died.

I do not know the law enough but I would think that error of judgement due to inexperience is not a valid defence?  Or at least it is a defence that should be tested in court.  I would say many health and safety convictions are for those who exercised an error of judgement and often inexperience.  But I am sure others are more expert in this and may correct me.

Ultimately there were clear failings on the day that led to the deaths of 96 people.  To me it seems reasonable that people are held to account for those failings where it is proven they were negligent in their duty.

Unpopular opinion coming.

Curious as to what justice is expected?

Several factors seem to be responsible; poor decisions appear to have been made, bad design of the stadium, poor signage etc etc  but the rush of the fans caused the deceased and injured to be crushed. 

As I see it every one of those who pushed in to the stadium is just as responsible as the other.  Every one of those people that pushed in to that stadium needs to take some responsibility.

They didn't "push into the stadium". The gates were opened and they were ushered in to the stadium on the orders of Duckinfield. 

There were indeed many contributory factors on the day, but the mistakes (and later attempted misdirections / cover up) by Duckinfield and others were unforgivable and, possibly, criminal. 

According to the report below and the CCTV footage the turnstiles were opened due to the crowds pushing against them.

Your use of the word ushered suggests it was all done in an orderly manner

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19545126

The concept of justice for the 96 people who died is simply an emotional bandwagon for the living.

The universe no longer exists for the 96 people who died and there is no such thing as justice where there is no existence.

The living want a scalp, but the jury were unable to provide it having considered the evidence. 

So what? Another jury on another day in the hope that they provide the desired result? JCM and I don't agree on much, but honestly, this is nonsense.

Somebody ordered the gates to be opened. It is highly unlikely anyone would have died if the fans had been left outside.

AIUI the gates being opened were to reduce the potential injuries at the gates.

If the fans didn't rush in

If the stadium wasn't poorly designed (do the architects need to be held accountable as well)

If the fans didn't kick the crap out of each other there wouldn't have been the fences in the first place

If it was raining, maybe not so many fans would have turned up 

If , if  if 

There appears to be many factors that came together with tragic consequences and I really don't see how one person can be made responsible.

The justice has been provided by the fans being exonerated of blame by the second enquiry. It seems what many of the relatives want is not justice but vengeance.

There *was* pressure on the turnstiles - of course there was - if you had travelled 100 miles and paid for a ticket you would be desperate to get in once you knew the match had started.

It wasn't Turnstiles that caused the problem - they were designed to allow directed entry at a controlled rate - it was the sudden opening of 'Exit Gate C' which allowed a sudden, unregulated, entry of fans towards the Leppings Lane stands.

That was Duckinfield's decision. 

So you are saying the choice of the stadium, the fans rushing in and the poor design, the fences to stop the fans fighting and the large volume of fans at the turnstiles who appeared to be getting injured are not contributors 

I'm far from a fan of the police, but I'm even less of a fan of blame culture, everyone there needs to accept some responsibility

But you seem to think it was all one mans fault????

No I don't. I've stated in both my posts that there were multiple factors involved; many of which were addressed decades ago . 

Most of those (choice of stadium, stadium design, volume of fans) were under police planning influence or control in advance of the match.

Some (unplanned exit gate opening) were a deliberate decision by Duckinfield. 

The fans were doing what fans should be predicted to do. That is not a failure of the fans, but a failure of planning and management. The courts have already ruled on that. 

Personally I don't agree, not that my opinion makes the tiniest bit of difference

So I'll bow out 

As I have observed before, this would not have happened if the event concerned were a chamber music concert, and the reason why it would not then have happened is that chamber music fans behave more considerately than football fans, and wait their turn rather than pushing.

That doesn't affect the legal position much - the object of crowd control is to recognise that people push and protect other people against that - but on the other hand the impetus some people have to deny what is blatantly obvious is ridiculous.

jcm

Because it is no longer possible fairly to evaluate decisions made under huge pressure in real time nearly thirty years ago. Standards today are different, and moreover after thirty years of propaganda in the press from both sides, everyone has an opinion already, and the jury will not be different.

That's one reason. There are others, another being that it is not possible to right every wrong in the universe and that at some point we have to stop spending public money on this and spend it on, for instance, fighting knife crime in our cities.

jcm

I think you are on dodgy ground blaming the fans and siding with the Sun. You are right that a ridiculously long time has passed but then you've got to look at _why_ it took so long and the judge whether the actions of the press and police that contributed to the delay were honourable or dishonourable and whether they should be allowed to obstruct justice over the years.

Clearly there were failings across the board, the ground, the FA, the culture, the decisions to fence etc etc but where there is criminal negligence and no statute of limitations and no honourable reason for the 30 year delay why wouldn't the law act?

Where do you draw the line in terms of time? one week? one year? 5 years? ten? you don't need reminding of the consequences of the decisions and you don't need reminding of the piss-poor behaviour of the police and all you can offer is, "back then this was acceptable"?

How do you know from the middle or at the back of a crowd that your relatively mild forward pressure or even just resistance to moving back is multiplying through the crowd to kill people at the front? How do you know that flow of people in through the door is ultimately collapsing onto those inside rather than moving into space or increasing density crowd density uniformly? If you can't know, how can you be responsible?

jk

Aye... planning and politics.  Dukenfield was put in that role without experience of the ground and the job.   All grounds had issues in those days, and in respect of Leppings Lane the problems were known and more experienced officers knew how to manage it.  For whatever reason the usual experienced guy was taken away from the job by the CC and Dukenfield given it instead.  Who then froze when the known problems built up.   

Indeed, one thing that never gets a mention is that everyone who ever invaded a pitch in the bad old days of 70's hooliganism bears some responsibilty because if it weren't for their behaviour there would never have been perimeter fences at football grounds in the first place.

I'm not sure thats true, look at the cookstown hotel disco crush.... they were left outside and refused entrance.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-47606006

Crowds don't make decisions, they act like crowds.

At Glastonbury 2000 I was making my way towards one of the gates to the fields and it went very quickly from "very busy" to impossible to turn back due to the sheer volume of people behind me. Within about 30 seconds the crush became such that my feet actually left the floor and I was just moved around by surges in the crowd for what seemed like forever, until somehow someone managed to get the gate shut and the crowd slowly disbursed. I might have been more scared in my life but I'm struggling to think of it. Nice to know that some people on this thread would have it as my fault if it had (quite easily) ended in tragedy rather than the organisers, simply as I was trying to get somewhere.

In that case one might need to ask; "Why on earth was someone without the necessary experience put in charge in the first place ?"

That makes sense to me.

The proper thing would be to apply that principle across the board .

Agree about it being multi-factorial, but you’re wrong about people pushing being to blame. That’s just normal crowd dynamics.

I’d be interested to know why Duckenfield as an individual was prosecuted and not SYP. 

Are you saying that pushing is a part of normal crowd dynamics?

You could tell that to their relatives and see what they say?

Many factors are included in crowd dynamics... time, stress, aggressiveness.  Simulations factor all these things in.  From experience I'd say pushing is normal in crowd behaviour, not necessarily as an aggression tactic, but one designed to try and give the person more space between them and the person in front ie holding back the crowd behind by putting an arm out in front to give one space.

It can be, in a concertina effect, one person stops, the person behind nudges into them, with progressively less awareness of what is happening the further back one goes. Add some impatience in and people can become squashed or trodden on under foot. 

These jobs come with legal responsibility.  The CPS must have decided that there was enough evidence Dukinfield was criminally negligent in his own actions I suppose.

Well quite.

The question to be answered in that case is whether he did his best but made a mistake or was he negligent to a criminal degree?

I imagine time and absence of aggression were two factors low on the scale in the anti Brexit march where upwards of 600,000 people managed to survive the day without much pushing being in evidence.

I'm sorry but you are perpetuating a myth that has been disproved by both the HIP and the inquests, the BBC article you link to also does not mention fans pushing at all but you claim it does to continue to perpetuate the drunken Liverpool fans forcing the gate narrative that Duckenfield created to cover his own ass.

The BBC article clearly says:

By 14.45 CCTV footage showed there were thousands of people pressing into the turnstiles and alongside a large exit gate, called Gate C.

The funnel-shaped nature of the area meant that the congestion was hard to escape for those at the front. The turnstiles became difficult to operate and people were starting to be crushed.

This isn't saying the fans were all pushing their way to try and get to the front it is saying that the setup meant congestion was inevitable at the front because of the way the police had set the area up and their poor management of a large crowd (and the decision to give 7 turnstiles to 10,000 fans). 

The inquest stated:

The behaviour of Liverpool supporters did not cause or contribute to the dangerous situation at the Leppings Lane turnstiles.

I'm assuming you've reviewed the evidence or at least read the various reports into the tragedy rather than simply relying on hear say and the odd BBC article which you think supports your opinion but really doesn't. I'm curious why if your unpopular opinion was correct why has an independent investigatory panel and an extensive inquest with all the facts and not the facts doctored and altered by Duckenfield and SYP to cover up their gross negligence (which by the way the inquest has already found and why 96 unlawful deaths were recorded) has determined that in fact the fans did not contribute to the dangerous situation you feel it is appropriate to perpetuate an ill informed myth? 

The burden of proof is pretty high and I doubt Mr Duckenfield started the day with the intent of being responsible for the incident. That is always the difficulty with these cases, proving that somebody set out to deliberately harm somebody else.It is probably why the case was always going to fail and will continue to do so even at a retrial.

This may (possibly) bring in another factor;

For many years, when persons in occupations with "Final Salary" pensions were coming up towards retirement, these persons were given a promotion by their mates to ensure that they retired on a "good whack". No questions of whether such persons were actually capable of doing the job that the promotion entailed. Is this one of those occasions, and is 96 dead the end result of this "corporate" fiddling ?

I would need to refresh myself on this, but I believe it was along the lines Duckenfield replaced the usual experienced officer in that role as a result of office politics at SY police /Hammerton Road. Duckenfield was Wrights/Bettisons? man.  It was noted at the time and has been discussed and investigated in the enquiries as to why he was doing a job he wasn't experienced in. 

Intent is irrelevant for gross negligence manslaughter:

• the existence of a duty of care to the deceased

• a breach of that duty of care which

• causes (or significantly contributes) to the death of the victim, and

• the breach should be characterised as gross negligence and therefore a crime

Interesting, but I will come back to my view that its almost impossible to prove. This is why apart from in 1 or 2 cases corporate manslaughter charges usually have failed in other cases as an example.. Let us look at it from his perspective... he did not start the day with the intention of killing anybody or being deliberately negligent.It is surely why alot of these cases fall flat on their faces despite cries for justice from the victims families( however much we sympathise with their view point).

And there were other contributing factors that for Duckenfield to be held totally responsible in this way is just well not right.Especially when you consider that a number of parties invloved such as the contracting engineers had ceased to exist years ago so could not now be prosecuted. All the focus was on Duckenfield .

A very difficult case, not easy.

Corporate manslaughter is an entirely different offence and isn't what Duckenfield is charged with.

You are still approaching it from an intent to do harm or be deliberately negligent which is as I said before irrelevant to a finding of involuntary manslaughter. If he had intent or deliberately decided to be negligent then he would have been charged with 95 counts of manslaughter.

The only difficulty in proving this case is whether or not the acts of Duckenfield were so grievously deficient or unreasonable as to amount to gross negligence, that no reasonable or competent match commander placed in those circumstances would have made those decisions.

What doesn't go in Duckenfields favour is the attempts to cover up, indicating immediately that he is aware that his decision failed to meet the required standard. Further that at Hillsborough there had been at least two other similar situations encountered within the preceding ten years but which had been handled differently and hadn't resulted in 96 deaths.

Unfortunately the number of mistakes Duckenfield made absolutely means he should be held to account regardless of how long ago. I fail to see how the contracting engineers going bust makes any difference? They didn't fail to check the safety certificate, to allocate match police resources, they didn't fail to consider the build up of fans, they didn't order a gate opened, they didn't fail to order the gates to the tunnel to be closed or fans to be ushered away from the already full pens, they didn't decide not to delay the kick off, they didn't decide to hold ambulances outside of the ground whilst fans could still have been saved or order police to hold a line on the half way line whilst people were dying and they didn't deliberately and knowingly attempt to cover that up for 27 years.

So I'm afraid I disagree with you and it is entirely right that Duckenfield be held to account. It's only a shame that they haven't been able to charge more than just the two.

He has been held to account by the trial, and it failed.

It might be "just normal crowd dynamics" but does that absolve the crowd from any form of collective blame for the end result?

Nope, the jury failed to reach a verdict, it doesn't acquit or vindicate him, dispensing with jury trials is a whole different story for debate.

Nope, but the HIP and inquests did.

And there comes a point when you have to draw a line under it and  we now appear to have reached that point. Pending off course the H & S fine on the second guy.

I would tend to agree with you if he hadn't deliberately and consciously tried to smear the dead and the surviving fans in order to cover up his and SYP's failings. 

If my father, daughter or brother had dies I wouldn't want to "draw a line under it" until someone had been held to account for the agreed failings. 

I believe there is a 2nd case taking place later this year for other retired members of SYP. Perhaps don't read about it if youre too bored.

That is a separate issue

That has been considered in depth - the answer was yes. 

I think it's essentially due to a (fair) twist in the law.... if a law doesn't exist at the time the law was broken there is no crime. Also a defendant can only be penalised within the sentencing guidelines in force at the time of the offence. 

I think the corporate manslaughter and H&S laws that could be applied are all more recent than Hillsborough.

There could well be a case to prosecute Drukenfield's seniors, but I doubt the evidence exists to stand it up

Yes, it would seem more appropriate to me.

I was just thinking back to the Ibrox disaster in which 66 people were crushed to death at an auld firm game in 1971. Seems that the football club were held responsible and were sued by the victims relatives. What responsibility has the club taken for Hillsborough?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Ibrox_disaster

That's a red herring. It wasn't a chamber music concert, it was a football match where crowds behave differently and there are officials in positions of responsibility paid to manage that. Crowd management at football matches wasn't new, it was an existent role and responsibility. The figures on turnstile access were available but ignored, the opening of the gate was also a massive contributor.

In the same way that venues / tour managers have to manage concerts, security and safety of mosh pitting for their given and anticipated audience. I live with a tour manager and some of the things he has to take into account are the entrances / exits, and anticipation of the selected crowd behaviour as par for the course of what a mosh pit crowd does in terms of velocity. 

In other words, if you are managing a crowd, then the job is to manage the type of crowd you are appointed to anticipate. That's the rub. 

Don't forget that current practice has been informed by the mistakes of the past and you shouldn't judge the behaviour of officials thirty years ago by today's standards.

What are you saying? The turnstile figures were available then. And had been for some time. The maths were already available. That's my point.

It’s not just a red herring, it’s an incredibly lazy narrative that’s been rolled out for decades in order cover those responsible who decided from minute 1, they we’re not taking the blame for this.

it reminds me of deserving / undeserving poor narratives, the crap South Yorkshire police rolled out about the Ripper murders and how certain women’s morals meant they were more or less worthy.

It’s such a tired analogy I’m genuinely flabbergasted it’s still being trotted out only 2 years after the fans were cleared of any blame whatsoever (and 27 years too late).

Let’s use JCM’s lazy analogy and put it in the context of climbing. Said chamber music crowd are attending an evenings concerto which happens to be taking place at the top floor of a climbing wall. You can take the stairs; all the chamber music fans do, that’s the sensible route. They arrive safely at the top. A climber decides to take a route which leads him to the same place. He then falls and all the bolts rip because the wall was unsuitable and hadn’t been inspected nor updated their H&S documents. He falls to his death. The media report it as unfortunate but climbers are by their very nature daredevils with a death wish. Wouldn’t happen to the chamber music crowd etc etc. But still bullshit to class a whole collective group of people as one simply because of their hobby or interest. There seems to be no shame in that though when it comes to football.

Thank you for writing that.

I’ve been seething all day at some of the drivel being written on here. It’s hard to believe that these attitudes still exist but not entirely unsurprising.

I agree that there was a lazy narrative rolled out 'explaining' this event - infact worse, it was divisive, judgemental and corrosive. But these have been tried and proved in courts of law and fans were exonerated. I am addressing the Dukenfield trial now only, and my own personal jury is out on that appropriate reponse, what I am reacting to is that people still drag the football crowd into the blame, after all the rulings, when that debate has been long over and proven.

Blamed for being normal - in effect?

West Yorkshire police were responsible for the Ripper enquiry, not South Yorkshire (who caught him).

I take your point though, although sadly that was a reflection of social attitudes at the time as much as failings within the police.

Bettison (ACC) was originally charged with the group on trial now, but charges were dropped later.  Wright (CC) has died.

From the BBC website:

No organisation will face corporate charges and no-one from the ambulance service will be charged, said Sue Hemming, head of special crime and counter-terrorism at the CPS.

She explained that Sheffield Wednesday is now a "different company" and, as it is not a successor organisation, is not criminally liable for any offences that might have been committed in 1989.

Original article with info on charges:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-40419819

You might want to Google what 'steaming' was. A common tactic in the era and completely destroys any tickets sale or gate data. 

There is no doubt certain police individuals should be fried for their cover up.

But football does attract the worst fans. There is little doubt and it encourages tribal behaviour where people feel less responsible for individual actions. 

In the last 20 years name any other sport that has had to play to closed arenas because of fan behaviour?

But, again, that doesn't mean the fans were directly responsible for the deaths in that stadium. 

People on final salary pensions rarely had to wait until they were 65. Far from it in fact.

I agree with that sentiment, but by the time of Hillsborough there had been many of these disasters around the world and the lessons from those was being put in to practice. Tragically not at Hillsborough.

Yes and my point is that after Hillsborough root and branch changes were put in place.

Stadiums went all seater, fencing removed or redesigned, I think access to and from the stadiums were redesigned. No doubt policing/stewarding practices were changed

All of that implies that stadium design and stewarding practices of the time were not fit for purpose. An accident waiting to happen. Weren't all these factors not largely to blame for the disaster rather than a mistake made by one individual?

I absolutely agree that the behaviour of the police after the event was despicable but that is a separate matter.

I'm sorry but I don't know enough of the details to understand why turnstile figures make this individual guilty of gross negligence.

That's interesting, how did things work in SYP at the time of Hillsborough?

If you need to understand more, perhaps do a search for the summing up report on the enquiry.  

My friend was interviewed as part of it, and one thing he did say to me was that it was clear that this was going to be the inquiry to end all inquiries on it, and with the questions asked, they were going into it in such detail that it would encompass everything about what went wrong.  As a result - those who were deemed to be criminally negligent went to trial. That doesn't mean there weren't contributory factors as outlined, but we are talking criminal prosecutions.  Its worth noting that Duckinfield accepted responsibility for the events at the inquiry.  

Without being disrespectful to you or dismissing your posts. I think the outcome is to be relied upon more than mere ponderings.  

It 'depends' - potentially. From memory, the person who's role Dukenfield took over would (within the hour plus before kick off) periodically come out of the control box and walk around outside of the ground to give him a sense of what was happening to do with crowd movements, and use that to inform the decisions he made/orders he gave once back in the control box. In comparison, Dukenfield took one walk around outside the ground as crowds were starting to form, and then remained within the control box and took the rest of his decisions from there. The decision to open the gates was made because he was being asked to do something about the crush outside the turnstiles - (imho) more than because it was one of a thought through sequence of steps taken to make sure the crowds were managed well. 

It depends on how much one blames the fans outside the grounds, too, a fan who was there at the time waiting to get in, has spoken of feeling guilty about the role he played (albeit as a single individual among very many) towards creating the crush, but then the precedent had already been set to do with how fans could behave, possibly raising the point that decisions should be taken based on 'What is', rather than 'What should be'. The poor design of Hillsborough at the time only made things worse (IIRC there's questions about why Hillsborough was chosen, too, because there'd been smaller crowd management problems there previously).

It is separate, but it can potentially colour how much blame people apply to Dukenfield (sp), I think, because of any lingering anti-fan sentiments absorbed from the media by osmosis.

As you describe it he made a mistake because he hadn't assessed the situation carefully enough. The sort of mistake that stems from a lack of experience.

If his assessment was poor because he had, for example, been drunk then it would certainly be criminal negligence but as far as I can tell no one is suggesting anything like that. As it is no one has explained to me why he wasn't doing the best job he could given the circumstances and his lack of experience.

That's what I'm wondering, the only thing which comes to mind is whether what his predecessor did before him was on record for him to learn from, potentially raising the question of why he didn't (appear to) and follow his lead. Presumably that would come down to how things were done at SYP at the time.

Edit: I'm not out to blame him, it's more that having done risk assessments and health and safety for conservation work, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some material on crowd management in SYP at the time, but my faith in SYP is pretty weak. Whether it was minimal or not is anybody's guess.

Eric you are making a mistake that I think others on here have in that you are applying a subjective test to Duckenfields experience and decision making. The legal test is an objective test in that did he meet the standard that a reasonably competent match commander would have. The answer is categorically no.

The best legal analogy I can think of is that of a learner driver, the law says that a learner driver owes the same duty of care to other road users that an experienced driver does, their experience level is irrelevant to determining if they failed in that duty. If the learner drives the wrong way down the road and kills someone they are equally as liable as a 30 year experienced driver who does the same. 

The fact is he was put in charge of the match, so regardless of his experience he is required to meet the standard of care that a reasonably competent match commander would and if he breaches that duty he is therefore negligent. Those placed in positions of responsibility of other peoples safety have additional obligations to take special precautions to prevent harm. I think the description above by Timmd of the previous match commanders routine is an example of reasonable behaviour and it would be interesting to know if that was standard match commander practice.

It went 'belt and braces', to remove, as much as possible, the human error element from crowd control at football matches.

If well understood good practice at the time had been adhered to that disaster would not have happened. Subsequently, the powers that be decided that you could not leave it to individuals to follow that advice, and that systems have to be in place that prevent it from happening again.

Duckenfield was grossly negligent, but I do have mixed feeling over whether he or his superiors should have faced criminal charges at the time. What I am sure about, is that if this had happened at a rock concert, and it was the children of middle class conservatives that were killed, the response would have been very different.

Not really, if you consider it a separate issue then any crime that someone goes out of their way to cover up means that we should simply draw the line under it. So all you have to do to avoid a crime is cover up your role in it and blame someone else for a couple of decades and you're golden.

I expect those working on Operation Yew Tree would disagree with you.

  The Documentary that I saw suggested that Duckenfield had been offered advice, not least by his predecessors in the role. He refused to meet with them. These men were very familiar with the problems at Hillsborough and which "work arounds" to to implement (and which NOT to implement)to deal with overcrowding at the Leppings Lane end.  Duckenfield deliberately remained in ignorance of this. He was described as an "arrogant" man.

  Obviously all this has to be seen in the context of the 1980s: poor stadiums, football hooliganism (and therefore the police attitude to football crowds) , drinking culture, lower standards of H&S etc etc

Ok, that's the answer I was looking for. Why him and not his boss who put an inexperienced officer in charge. He ignored or did not seek out advice from those with experience and as such was negligent.

It seems harsh to seek to blame individuals when the crowd is excused on the grounds of it being normal behaviour.

Mistakes are normal too, maybe now is the time to let this rest.

It does seem harsh, but if one takes a step back and looks at it like, 'People do X, which means Y need to happen to keep them safe', if he's found not to have done Y, he possibly is to blame - especially if he shunned the advice of others more experienced who were successful in keeping crowds safe? I guess even if the crowds were unruly, if unruly crowds had been kept safe before Hillsborough, it's arguable that the absence of the right decisions led to the crush.

I don't know how I'd feel as a relative after all this time. I do feel for David Dukenfield, but it was his job to ensure people's safety, so one needs to look into what he did*.

*Incidentally, a brother, while being taught something music related, had a bad teacher who kept saying that he was only human, and my bro got cheesed off, and concluding that anybody could say that, he complained and they ended up with a different teacher (I believe he was fired). It wasn't about people's lives, but I guess you've got to do your job in the end.

I think you need to read this:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/apr/26/hillsborough-disaster-dead...

you may reconsider your support for the actions of Duckenfield, SYP, the FA etc....

The case againstt him did not cover the post match events as I understand it.

Are the Juventus fans relatives still pursuing a case? 

No disrespect to the dead or the relatives, but there was poor supporter behaviour at Heysel. Maybe the same fans attended Hillsbrough. 

In your opinion.

In any case you are understating the degree of negligence.

From the CPS guidelines: (my notes in bold)

There are, therefore, five elements which the prosecution must prove in order for a person to be guilty of an offence of manslaughter by gross negligence:

a) the defendant owed an existing duty of care to the victim; Seems pretty clearly established

b) the defendant negligently breached that duty of care; Seems likely, but matter for the jury

c) it was reasonably foreseeable that the breach of that duty gave rise to a serious and obvious risk of death; A "clear and obvious risk of death" - not injury, or stampede, or pitch invasion. Matter for jury

d) the breach of that duty caused the death of the victim;It's what the inquiry indicated, but this isn't the inquiry it's a manslaughter trial.

e) the circumstances of the breach were truly exceptionally bad and so reprehensible as to justify the conclusion that it amounted to gross negligence and required criminal sanction.Speaks for itself. Jury to decide.

3. The question of whether there is a serious and obvious risk of death must exist at, and is to be assessed with respect to, knowledge at the time of the breach of duty. A subjective judgement, based of what the defendant knew at the time. And it's a "serious and obvious risk of death", not anything less. Question for the jury again.

4. A recognisable risk of something serious is not the same as a recognisable risk of death. Speaks for itself and highlights how serious and obvious the risk of death must be. It's a very high threshold.

5. A mere possibility that an assessment might reveal something life-threatening is not the same as an obvious risk of death: an obvious risk is a present risk which is clear and unambiguous, not one which might become apparent on further investigation. Again, reiterates that high threshold

Obviously everything you say is true. Whether the crowd behaved in an unruly fashion, and whether or not that contributed to the events, has nothing to do with the questions for the jury in this case nor in any of the very numerous civil negligence cases which were all settled years ago and should have been the end of the matter. Whats vexes me is the continued insistence, in the face of all the evidence, that there was no pushing whatsoever and that inquiries have found that (which they didn't, not being concerned with the question). The footage of the crowd outside the ground is (or was; I can't find it now) publicly available, and if anyone thinks that the behaviour of the crowd didn't contribute, I suggest they seek that out. Like most clusterf*cks, the outcome was the consequence of a great many behaviours small and large, many of them foolish and selfish like so much of human conduct.

Confusing these simple factual observations with victim-blaming is just stupid. It's silly not to be honest.

jcm

As to the so-called cover-up, as I have said before, it is nothing that doesn't happen when any public institution comes under fire. On a smaller scale it happens in every medical negligence case. It will continue to happen as long as we have fault-based compensation systems, an adversarial inquest procedure, and public bodies backed by anonymous private insurance companies with the priorities one expects from the latter. If we want anything different to happen next time, we need to have a serious conversation about our priorities and processes.  Commissioning a report by an academic lawyer with no practical experience and a lifelong anti-police bias is not the way to achieve that and predictably didn't; what it generated was some feelgood nonsense and a warm feeling for those who commissioned the report, along with a few hopefully vote-winning good headlines. If they had asked a lawyer with some practical experience of litigation to do it, the report would have been very different.

jcm

As to the unfortunate Mr Duckenfield, the main problem is that it is simply impossible to have a fair trial in these circumstances. The public wants a scapegoat and will not be satisfied until it can have an(other) orgasmic rush of 'Justice for the 96' headlines, and naturally the state wants to provide one and has been doing its best to do so for some years. It is hard enough to judge events from 30 years ago fairly at the best of times. It is essentially impossible when there has been a spate of newspaper headlines, articles, documentaries, etc for thirty years.

It's a mistake to confuse justice with vengeance. Every trial is the state against an individual, and we must always err on the side of fairness to the individual. The more unpopular the individual is, the more important that principle is.

This has long since gone too far. Spending millions on seeking to bang up a 70-year-old retired man for a mistake made thirty years ago was bad enough. Spending the same amount again to try and do it twice is ridiculous. The criminal courts are under enough pressure as it is.

jcm

What elements are you talking about specifically, when you talk about a so-called cover up?

Not just Heysel but recreational football violence in general contributed hugely to this event. The mindset at the time was that football supporters were a danger to others (which they were) and that preventing them from injuring others was the main policing priority (which it was, and rightly so). It's difficult to recreate the menace that attended football matches in the 70's and 80's if you weren't around at the time.  This is another reason why a fair trial thirty years on is a remote possibility.

jcm

Oh, the dreadful editing of witness statements that was alleged, the conspiracy that was alleged to make the statements cohere, the 'pressure' that was put on witnesses to 'change' their evidence, the efforts supposedly made to ensure that no damaging documents were generated and/or circulated/retained, all that sort of thing.

The usual, in other words.

jcm

An account given by a police officer who was there of his witness statement being altered seems pretty credible to me? The part in which he mentioned there being too few police present was removed. I'm probably more inclined to take his word for it over other people's scepticism that it happened.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/18/hillsborough-inquest-police...

{ In his original statement, which he wrote by hand two weeks after the disaster of 15 April 1989, Thomas had written three paragraphs under the heading "Police deployment". All of that section was then deleted without his consent, he said, in the version of the statement sent to the Taylor inquiry.

The section included his opinion that police numbers were too few to maintain control of the crowd: "Once the crush started [outside the Leppings Lane entrances], the numbers of officers on foot seemed to reduce dramatically." }

Oh, absolutely credible. Obviously witness statements confine themselves to helpful evidence. Happens in every single litigation there’s ever been.

It’s like the Blair dossier. Public-facing documents are not confessions.

jcm

I detect some sarcasm. This isn't the only police man to have found his witness statement to have been altered, and there was a pattern of fans within the area where the crush happened being asked if they'd been drinking as part of their interviewing - in line with the picture painted by SYP (and also The Sun). 

If you're sceptical there was any attempt to blur the perception of what happened by SYP, I don't suppose I'm going to change your mind, but I'd hope it was after a thorough perusal of what's available that you'd be sceptical, rather than before.

I don't disagree that pushing and shoving happened when the standing Kops were in place, I attended enough football matches where that happened. We would get swayed along with the crowd through the turnstiles and pushed against the barriers in the kop - there WAS a lot wrong with football stadiums then. But 96 people didn't die, until Hillsborough (I'll leave Heysel out of this as it's a separate matter).

In the same way, pushing and shoving is part of the mosh pit at concerts. Even at non mosh pitting crowds concert's manage the crowd with security measures in place. In that respect, football crowds had been managed before, even in the era of the 1980's, so too have concert go-ers.

If my partner oversaw a concert in which people had died or got injured, he'd have to be accountable. That includes managing mosh pits. 

On another point about inexperience - I recently changed job fields, but despite my lack of experience in that new job field, I'd be held fully accountable for any deaths / accidents because I'm employed to do that role with the trust of the public. Within 6 months of my role, before I was qualified, I had a case against me (not for anything serious) but it was fair enough from the perspective of the service user. It wasn't their fault that I was inexperienced. They had a right to complain about it. 

For the record, I did say that my jury was out about whether Dukenfield should be criminally prosecuted at this time, that's on the basis that a) I think that the exoneration of the crowd and previous inquiry rulings have made the point

b) I'd expect to have the same accountability made to me professionally 

c) That despite the same kop conditions for years, 96 people never died before going to a football match

d) The role of people managing crowds is to manage the type of crowd they're in the business of

e) Dukenfield should never have been given that responsibility at such short notice, so the chain of responsibility goes higher

f) I'm not sure how constructive the prosecution of him would be. Infact I think the opposite. 

My bottom line is that the fans can't be blamed. The same as the roles and responsibility my partner takes for managing a mosh pit crowd. I went to football matches for many years. Many in the kop days and many in the all seater days.

Incidentally, and totally irrelevant here, but Jimmy Hill introduced the seater stadiums at CCFC and yet none of the West End at Highfield Road ever sat down. Infact we bought our season tickets for the West End so that we could stand at the seats and have the camaraderie from the Kop days. There was never any trouble.

Sorry if my post is a bit pedantic with bullet letters (!)

I’m not in the least sceptical that there were attempts to blur he perception of what happened by SYP. Of course there were; adversarial litigation consists very largely of an attempt to put forward your side’s version of what happened. What is tiresome is people referring to such entirely normal procedures as amending witness statements as a ‘cover-up’. 

jcm

Where am I supporting any individual or organisation?

Don't you.think that it is a valid question?

If I'd been standing in a stall and been lucky not to have been squashed to death or injured, my response would be 'What's that got to do with anything?'  So not really, no. I'd be wanting to know why they were asking.

What J~CM hasn't seem to note when he talks about footage of the crowds, is that way before the crowds built up, the match commander was still in control of the fans progression to the sound - from Wadsley bridge, Leppings Lane, Penistone Road and beyond.  It was failures way before the congestion and failing to note the build up which helped create the log jam at the turnstiles.  It wasn't just a case of bad decisions made in the midst of the crowd problem at the turnstiles, but a build up of missed opportunities to prevent the situation in the first place.  All these decisions taken as a whole made for the mess that was to come, and it was at this time that he froze, once it had all gotten out of control.  

Exactly and unlike the person he replaced, he didn't periodically go outside to see what was happening to do with the crowd movements outside the ground.

Well, it was cover up, then, that's what such blurring amounts to when one is in a position of trust like the Police. It's (partly) why the Tailor report was discredited, because the witness statements of police had comments about there seeming to be remarkably few police around to control the crowds outside of the ground remove from them, to reduce the possibility of the police being seen in a poor(er) light.

If removing parts of witness statements to change the perception of events (which one is facing blame over) isn't a cover up, I'd like to know what name other than 'normal' one might give it.

'Blur the perception' (JCM)...  Let's just call it lies in this case - or perhaps something a lawyer might understand better.. 'perverting the course of justice'.  

youtube.com/watch?v=4SdGtCWrvlo&

This isn't graphic footage, but picture yourself amongst the crowd, either being one of the people who climbed up into the tier above, or who was stuck in the middle and survived, and then think whether you'd have thought it reasonable to have been asked if you'd been drinking, it'd have nothing at all to do with what happened to you.

'I gather you were among the crowd of people who experienced the crush?' - 'Yes I was' - 'Had you been drinking?' 

I don't see how it'd make one more culpable after having got into the stand in time to watch the match, to have had a couple of drinks before hand....

Reread what Jcm is saying. Basically we have an adversarial approach to these matters in the uk. It is therefore not surprising that there was and continues to be such so called “ cover ups” .

He also suggests that duckenfield basically does not have a hope of a fair trial as there is so much against him in the public domain.

and that the event was in jcms words a “clusterf*ck” .a combination of factors where no one individual is to blame. 

Reread what Jcm is saying. Basically we have an adversarial approach to these matters in the uk. It is therefore not surprising that there was and continues to be such so called “ cover ups” .

He also suggests that duckend basically does not have a hope of a fair trial as there is so much against him in the public domain.

and that the event was in jcms words a “clusterf*ck” .a combination of factors where no one individual is to blame. 

Would you do the same if breathylsed after  a car crash that wasn't your fault? 

I would say the fair trial statement is blown out of the water - given that the jury failed to reach a verdict, which suggests to me that they gave the guy a fair hearing and through fair deliberations could not reach one.  

The detailed inquiry came to the conclusions that there were criminal charges to answer - rather than a 'clusterf*ck'.  In Duckenfield's case - criminal negligence.  But no one set out that day to injure or kill anyone and, these type of cases - as shown by the non verdict are much harder to comprehend from a simple blame point of view.  Not every job comes with these consequences but his did.  Mine doesn't - my partner's does... so I share sympathy to some degree, but that is offset by the denial and lies conjured up by SYP in the aftermath.

Would you be ok with your 10 year old child being breathalysed (or having blood taken) after a fatal car crash to test their alcohol levels?

Why do you think that people are asked if they've been drinking and sometimes even breathalysed after road accidents?

Are we talking about 10 year old children?

Did you even go to football matches in the 80s. Fan management must have been a nightmare. We'd meet at the village pub, few drinks, minibus 20miles up the road with slab on board, usual pre match pubs, head to the game. The police working their butts off trying to keeping coaches and trains full of fans from opposing sides on different streets etc.. 105mins breather in the middle during the game. Then do the same in reverse. 

Alcohol was a massive contributor to football violence. Our local town even had a junior branch of soccer casuals where they learnt the ropes before being fully fledged adult hooligans.  

It doesn't excuse some poor decisions, but the police had a near impossible job. A disaster was not a matter of if but when. When you think about the combination of drunk fans, fenced in grounds and other events like stadium fires it's a miracle there haven't been more deaths. 

Well given that each of the dead had their blood tested for alcohol levels and the youngest victim was 10, then yes I’m afraid we are.

The breathalyser analogy is another crappy one. As a driver of any vehicle you have a duty of care to all other road users, and it’s the law and standard practice to be breathalysed after any accident.

As an individual attending an event you don’t have a duty of care for every other individual attending that event. That’s the job of those tasked with doing so.

www.theguardian.com%2Ffootball%2F2015%2Fmay%2F13%2Fyoungest-hillsborough-victim-pulled-from-horrific-scene-inquests-hear&psig=AOvVaw1rKnEF-7kFkkFCi2mRkUur&ust=1554726348414999

Cyclists and pedestrians also have a duty of care to other road users but I m not sure that they are routinely breathalysed after accidents.

I lived with football fans in the mid 80s and went to quite a few matches with them. I also lived in the Meadows in the Forest and County pre-match drinking zone. My impression was the well known hooligans were not pissed and were very much there to fight. The policing and ground control was often highly dangerous... fans were treated like animals and I particularly remember at Derby the Newcastle fans being under a constant deluge of missiles from above.. Going to the US to watch sport in an open family atmosphere was like a different universe. Even in the UK watching cricket or rugby with drunken fans showed alcohol wasn't the only factor. A friend regularly went to German matches in the same years ...again no great issue with booze.

I don’t understand your point? 

I understood you to be saying that motorists being routinely breathalysed after accidents was somehow connected to their having a duty of care towards other road users.

Can't think why. 

The jury failed to reach a conclusion as to criminal negligence. So at the moment it is not proven. 

So on the one hand omitting a section of a statement that relates to a PC's opinion and "feeling" about deployments (something he wasn't actually privy to, or a witness of) is a scandal bordering on perverting the course of justice, whilst on the other hand trying to include in a statement as much detail on the exact condition and activities of the crowd member and how that might have affected their memory or behaviour is  also scandalous and should never have been asked or included.

It's tricky trying to work out exactly what level of detail is required to ensure justice.

Hmmm. 

And is written in my post.

Now that's really not a very sensible observation, is it? The fact that that the jury was only - for instance - 9 to 3 in favour of a conviction is not a good reason to conclude that the trial must have been fair.

Unless, of course, one approaches the matter from the point of view that you'd expect there to be a good many jury members who found the defendant guilty.

Your posts make it abundantly clear why the process is not fair.

jcm

Don't be silly. Taking details out of a witness statement which don't support your client's case is not 'lying'. Putting in untrue details instead would be doing that. There was no finding that any such thing happened.

jcm

Ahh, pulling out the anti-liverpool fan rhetoric to justify the party line that the fans were to blame still despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Fans were held accountable for the violence and rightly went to prison for Heysel or are you conveniently overlooking that? There was no cover up and the fans were held to account immediately and with the co-operation from the club.

Petty attempt at point scoring that just shows the harm the cover up did. The two events are entirely separable but no less tragic. Are the juventus fans still pursuing a case, no because they got some form of justice from the appropriate legal system in a timely fashion.

It was more than that though wasn't it. The police officers were told to put their statements on plain paper instead of their pocket books which was a clear breach of their procedures. Why? Because statements in the pocket books would be clear if they had been altered and not so on the plain paper. It's not about just leaving out details which don't support your case its a deliberate attempt at subverting the narrative. Regardless of whether or not you think it is fair game, altering an individuals statement after it has been made is unlawful and it is entirely different to simply saying oh you shouldn't mention x, y  or z in your statement and there was plenty of evidence that happened, I believe they found some 160 odd doctored statements wasn't it?

Why remove officer's contemporaneous thoughts and observations of the event?

I have no issue with the police as they have a thankless task and there were many good stories from the day of how on duty and off duty police shone. Unfortunately the command chain greatly let them down before during and after the event. To this day only police officer's on duty that day have ever received any form of recompense for the events and whilst I am definitely not an advocate for the compensation culture that exists in the UK this is another source of consternation for the families.

But other comments above asking why people are upset that officer's feelings and thoughts of the event were redacted causes some concern but blood testing 10 year old's should be allowed to be included to give a full account of the scenario just reiterates that the narrative engendered in that control room persists today.

I'm also curious why you see the inquiry process as adversarial? My experience of inquiries has been entirely different and exactly as they are named, inquisitorial!

A lie is an assertion that is believed to be false, typically used with the purpose of deceiving someone. The practice of communicating lies is called lying, and a person who communicates a lie may be termed a liar.

The police gold command deliberately set out a false narrative of blame laid squarely at the door of the fans.

Just to be clear - I had friends who were officers at Hammerton Road at the time so I'm not anti police. My friend was a steward on the pitch that day.  

The inquiry found evidence of perjury.  I'm not sure if we are talking at cross purposes, but I'm not accusing the regular police officers of lying.  

Very well said ..JFT96