Hillsborough – Police Officer accepts responsibility.

The disaster resulted from your serious failures that day, as admitted to the jury? “Yes, sir.”

Hillsborough: Duckenfield has agreed he’s only now admitted his failings because he saw “writing on the wall” in the inquest.

Those poor families having to wait all those years whilst the dead were blamed.

I still don’t think it is the official line from the police, just one individual now admitting his mistakes.

To try and get some sort of context into how long it has taken for this to come about all of these events have happened since the Hillsborough distaster:

The Berlin Wall came down,
The Tianamen Square massacre,
Nelson Mandella was released,

That’s a long time.

He’s obviously overwhelmed by guilt and remorse. Just like Kelvin Mackenzie was when he realised that, despite his best efforts, the truth may be about to finally see the light of day

the official line from the police, just one individual now admitting his mistakes.

He was gold commander on the day – if he says it was his fault then that’s basically the police admitting responsibility.

Now it’s just the follow up lies and deception that has to have blame apportioned.

presumably this guy will be going to jail at some point for this right?

He was gold commander on the day – if he says it was his fault then that’s basically the police admitting responsibility.

Yup.

It’s the one thing that scares the shit out of me and being called to an incident, while I won’t be a Gold Commander I will be at point of command who will have to document and justify my actions in a hearing. A spontaneous decision at the time could be the wrong one that may cost lives. Scary shit.

presumably this guy will be going to jail at some point for this right?

…or retiring ‘on grounds of ill health’, with gold-plated pension intact

Thats how it usually always works isn’t it?

if he says it was his fault then that’s basically the police admitting responsibility.

Not really, now that he has broken ranks, it just puts the official line in absolute disarray. Up until his testimony I think every other police witness has followed the script.

edit: not that it really matters on the context of the overall episode, it is just my reading of his statement that he is speaking for himself in admitting his mistakes, and not representing the official line.

My sister was gold commander at a motor racing event.

She was in hospitality with Jenson Button and all the drivers and celebs and because she was in uniform people tended to talk to her and ask why she was there etc.

I said “Talking to JB must have been good?”

She basically said she spent the whole of the event hoping nothing went wrong and really didn’t enjoy any of it.

She had to be there in case anything went wrong but until it did had nothing to do except wait to be asked to make a decision that people’s lives would depend on. Scarey stuff.

He was gold commander on the day – if he says it was his fault then that’s basically the police admitting responsibility.

Not necessarily. It all depends on the context of his decisions and how they relate to the relevant protocols:

1) his actions / inactions went against established protocols
2) he followed the relevant protocols to the letter
3) there were no relevant protocols

etc….

presumably this guy will be going to jail at some point for this right?

Why?

Why?

I’m guessing it’d be the years of lying and misinformation

Why?

Conspiracy for starters. And we’ll go from there.

It’s the one thing that scares the shit out of me and being called to an incident, while I won’t be a Gold Commander I will be at point of command who will have to document and justify my actions in a hearing. A spontaneous decision at the time could be the wrong one that may cost lives. Scary shit.

This is why TJ regularly advocated a sort of amnesty enquiry system, during which people involved in such incidents could speak openly and therefore constructively without fear of punishment for a split second decision made in good faith, instead of playing the blame game which we currently do and which evidently can cause the self preservation instinct to kick in and override everything else.

Arse covering to the extent of lying and cover ups is never excusable, but it is unsurprising with today’s blame/revenge culture. I think TJ had a point, but at the same time I cant see it happening.

Why?

Well perverting the course of justice would be the fairly obvious place to start.

I think that if the authorities don’t prosecute him (and lets be honest, they never do when it involves their own), then I’d imagine that the families are already seeking legal advice about private prosecutions now.

Amazing how his much a bad decision has affected the country.

Not just the terrible loss of life but how the event lead to changes in stadia and some of the culture surrounding going to a football game in Britain.

any person who thinks 1 man can be held to blame for this is away with the fairies.

I don’t think anyone is on about blaming one man. Its just that now that this one man has admitted the actual truth, completely contravening everything said previously, I’d imaging the whole house of cards is going to come down now.

What he’s done is confirm what everyone always suspected. That there has been a massive, concerted cover up, involving pretty much everyone in the South Yorkshire Police falsifying evidence, lying under oath, and god knows what else.

Which is going to leave them open to prosecution. Though obviously the bill for compensation etc will be picked up by the taxpayer, as usual, while those people actually responsible are unlikely to see any personal repercussions

Same old, same old….

any person who thinks 1 man can be held to blame for this is away with the fairies.

he is clearly to blame (along with all the other rozzers that participated in the subsequent cover up), through his own admission.

sure it may have been an innocent mistake by an in-experianced officer doing a job he wasn’t really qualified to do but the cover up that followed is/was despicable and should be punished.

I also find it highly strange he can’t remember where he was in the 2 hours before he took up is position. he would have thought about every second of that day in the weeks/months/years that followed but for some reason he can’t remmember a big portion of the day….seems very odd to me….

I wonder if the bloke who dropped the ciggie but at Bradford is worried?
or maybe the sweeper who failed to clean under the seating?

should they take the blame too?

For what? I wasn’t aware there was an enormous conspiracy after Bradford, that prevented the families of the bereaved from finding out the truth?

Thats what we’re talking about here. Not the incident itself

the truth is, that it was a tragic series of events. one man taking responsibility/taking blame is wrong. imho.

The South Yorkshire police need to be held accountable for a determined and organised (not to mention illegal) conspiracy to cover up the truth about the deaths of 96 people, which shamefully included smearing the victims, fabricating evidence, and a catalogue of lies thats lasted until this week.

If nobody is held accountable (and personally I doubt they ever will be) then it makes a mockery of the entire justice system. It basically says that the members of the South Yorkshire police responsible for all this are above the law

It’s fear of being blamed/made a scapegoat that tempts people into telling lies and cover ups, and/or hasty public announcements.

I wholeheartedly agree that there should be appropriate consequences for those that give in to that temptation.

He was gold commander on the day – if he says it was his fault then that’s basically the police admitting responsibility.

Yup.

It’s the one thing that scares the shit out of me and being called to an incident, while I won’t be a Gold Commander I will be at point of command who will have to document and justify my actions in a hearing. A spontaneous decision at the time could be the wrong one that may cost lives. Scary shit.

Agreed – scary shit indeed – however that is why people in jobs of responsibility are paid better than those who put things in boxes all day.
And i’m sure ‘Gold commanders’ get paid a lot more than Paramedics, who have to make life changing decisions on a weekly basis.

The South Yorkshire police need to be held accountable for a determined and organised (not to mention illegal) conspiracy to cover up the truth about the deaths of 96 people, which shamefully included smearing the victims, fabricating evidence, and a catalogue of lies thats lasted until this week.

If nobody is held accountable (and personally I doubt they ever will be) then it makes a mockery of the entire justice system. It basically says that the members of the South Yorkshire police responsible for all this are above the law

Agreed – however the police appear to be above the law in a lot of areas, not just Hilsborough.

the truth is, that it was a tragic series of events. one man taking responsibility/taking blame is wrong. imho.

maybe, but presumably that now ‘the boss’ has basically admitted a conspiracy there should now be some sort of inquest/trial to determine if he and/or others were negligent/at fault on the day and should/shouldn’t take any blame.

IN addition the same (i.e a trial/inquiry) should surely take place with regards to the police cover up and preventing the course of justice?!

It’s fear of being blamed/made a scapegoat that tempts people into telling lies and cover ups, and/or hasty public announcements.

On the flip side it is the police forces insular attitude, protecting their own, that destroys public faith in the service.

And in this case, it went beyond self preservation, the police propaganda machine launched a viscous and ugly attack on the victims and their families. The very public the police are meant to serve and protect were victimised in a way that would be unimaginable in a “free” country if it hadn’t actually happened.

This isn’t a case that chips away at the public confidence in the mechanisms of authority, it smashes them out of the ballpark. It is time the police and government took some responsibility and stopped making excuses.

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” my arse!

the truth is, that it was a tragic series of events. one man taking responsibility/taking blame is wrong. imho.

hmm, I’m not sure that it was a tragic series of events. It nearly happened before at the same stadium. It’s not unreasonable to expect the cops to have a plan for it. That they both didn’t have a plan, and then deliberately chose to mount an exhaustive conspiracy to blame the very people there were there to protect makes it doubly worse.

sure it may have been an innocent mistake by an in-experianced officer doing a job he wasn’t really qualified to do but the cover up that followed is/was despicable and should be punished.

I doubt the cover up / smear campaign was orchestrated by the same one person in charge at the game, probably came right from the top.

Whether you like it or not, I don’t think the Police in the 80’s did see football fans as ‘the general public’, due to what happened week in week out up and down the country, and as a result didn’t handle it in the way they might have otherwise.

That stadium wasn’t fit for purpose but for some reason the FA seem to have escaped all blame. As I understood it the police had changed things since the previous near disaster, but for some reason that wasn’t followed on the day.

It was never the fault of the poor fans who died. However I do think that some of the ticketless fans who surged in have to accept some of the responsibility.

However I do think that some of the mythical ticketless fans who surged in have to accept some of the responsibility.

Which just goes to show how effective the propaganda has been, some still believe it.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/04/hillsborough-police-decided-to-blame-drunken-ticketless-liverpool-fans

However I do think that some of the ticketless fans who surged in have to accept some of the responsibility.

That’s a bold statement to make. Do you have any evidence to suggest that there were sufficient numbers of ticketless fans to make a significant impact on the number of deaths?

MSP – Member

It’s fear of being blamed/made a scapegoat that tempts people into telling lies and cover ups, and/or hasty public announcements.

On the flip side it is the police forces insular attitude, protecting their own, that destroys public faith in the service.

And in this case, it went beyond self preservation, the police propaganda machine launched a viscous and ugly attack on the victims and their families. The very public the police are meant to serve and protect were victimised in a way that would be unimaginable in a “free” country if it hadn’t actually happened.

This isn’t a case that chips away at the public confidence in the mechanisms of authority, it smashes them out of the ballpark. It is time the police and government took some responsibility and stopped making excuses.

I agree with you.

I doubt the cover up / smear campaign was orchestrated by the same one person in charge at the game, probably came right from the top.

And wasn’t it terribly handy to have both a right wing government, grateful for recent help in breaking the unions, which the south Yorkshire force excelled at even more gratuitously violently than the rest, by acting like a personal government militia? A right wing government who were all-too-happy to believe anything they were told, particularly if it simply reinforced their existing anti-working class ‘Enemy Within’ rhetoric?

And also a rabidly right wing press, very supportive of that same agenda, that gleefully swallowed and published, without asking a single solitary question, the words of those brave police officers when faced with ‘drunken thugs’?

And some people still believe that narrative now! No matter how discredited it is?! Unbelievable!!! Maybe its just because thats what, in their lazy, complacent way, just what they want to believe 🙄

have any evidence to suggest that there were sufficient numbers of ticketless fans to make a significant impact on the number of deaths?

No but given the crushing that killed the poor fans who were already in the stand suggests one of two possibilities.

1 that there were more tickets sold than the stands capacity.

Or

2 there were extra people in the stand who didn’t have tickets for either the match or that stand

Of these 2 possibilities I think the second is more likely than the first.

3, Too many people at one time being let through a large gate created a point of force at the back of a crowd, created a panic and spiralled out of control causing the fatal crush at the front of the stand.

It’s crowd dynamics, it is actually a studied and understood (to a certain degree) and it doesn’t take overcrowding in total to have disastrous effects.

But hey, blaming football fans is easier.

Or there’s the reality of possibility three:

There were very few fans without tickets, the right amount of tickets had been sold, but the lack of organisation funnelled people into the middle pen and left the side pens virtually empty. You can google photos of this – I’m not putting them up here as some will find them distressing.

MSP – Member

It’s fear of being blamed/made a scapegoat that tempts people into telling lies and cover ups, and/or hasty public announcements.

On the flip side it is the police forces insular attitude, protecting their own, that destroys public faith in the service.

And in this case, it went beyond self preservation, the police propaganda machine launched a viscous and ugly attack on the victims and their families. The very public the police are meant to serve and protect were victimised in a way that would be unimaginable in a “free” country if it hadn’t actually happened.

This isn’t a case that chips away at the public confidence in the mechanisms of authority, it smashes them out of the ballpark. It is time the police and government took some responsibility and stopped making excuses

But then similar coverups,failures to act,incompetent management protecting their pensions is now oh so relevant in the abuse of young kids at Rochdale, Dolphin square and Jimmy Saville and a lot more,not until these people who knew, who failed to act, lied or covered up are brought to book can we have faith in the justice system.