Hillsborough families say ‘we’ll never get justice’ as police escape punishment despite report’s findings – live

Police were to blame

Frances Mao

As reported earlier, the families today welcomed the police watchdog’s report, noting it is as comprehensive and detailed.

But none of the facts were new. Police culpability, the South Yorkshire Police Force’s mismanagement of the disaster, were established 36 years ago at the first official inquiry into the disaster, and again at the second inquests from 2014-2016.

“The report confirms what families and survivors knew all along,” said Charlotte Hennessy, whose father Jimmy was killed. Police lied and lied again, she said.

They blamed the fans for the disaster in a bid to minimise their own actions or lack thereof. The officer in charge at the match, David Duckenfield, was directly addressed by Hennessy and other victims’ relatives today, for telling the falsehood blaming victims instead of telling the truth. He faced manslaughter charges in 2019 but was acquitted.

The families said they will never accept his apology. He has walked away “scot-free, with a full pension”, said Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James was killed.

She was “very, very angry” that none of the officers, identified in the IOPC report, will ever face punishment and that no disciplinary action can be taken against them.

“When you think of all the 97 who died, unlawfully killed, and yet no one’s been held to account. To me that’s a disgrace.”

Hennessy said: “We’ll never get justice. Nobody’s ever going to go to prison for killing them.”

The Hillsborough families and survivors have responded to today’s landmark police watchdog report with the conclusion that they expect to never see justice as no officer will face punishment.

• 97 Liverpool fans died in a crush at the Hillsborough stadium on 15 April 1989 in what is Britain’s worst sporting tragedy.

• The report found that 12 police officers serving at the time of the disaster and the aftermath would have a case to face for “gross misconduct” and “fundamental failures”

• Most were South Yorkshire officers who failed to take action during the crush and then deliberately misled victims and investigators to try and minimise police responsibility

• Despite the findings, no police officer will face any legal action or disciplinary action because they have all since retired or died

• “Not a single officer will face a disciplinary action,” said the families’ lawyers today. “No one will be held to account… this report exposes a system that allows officers to simply walk away”

• Long-time campaigner Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James was killed, called it a “disgrace to this nation” that the identified officers will “walk away scot free with a full pension”

• Charlotte Hennessy, whose father James was killed aged 29, noted how her mother had died before any inquest had established police wrongdoing and many parents had died “tormented” by the “extent of the police cover-up”.

• She said “while some conclusions are disappointing”, families “accept the element of closure” provided by the police watchdog report.

• Because of the families’ campaigning over the decades, a new legal duty of candour, known as the Hillsborough law, has been imposed on all public officials and police officers

• This will hopefully close the loophole, families said, of police officers escaping punishment

• “We were beaten by the passage of time,” said Steve Kelly, whose 38-year-old brother Michael was killed.

• “It’s been a long, difficult road. We were all quite young at Hillsborough, we’re all quite old now. We can’t have it happen again.”

The IOPC called today’s report a “culmination of lengthy processes, including the longest inquests in English legal history and a number of criminal trials”.

The investigation began in 2012 and cost more than £150 million – a process criticised by both families and the police federation.

Margaret Aspinall, who lost her 18-year-old son in the crush fired back at the police union today saying the process wouldn’t have taken so many years had officers been honest and owned up to their failures at any stage of the multiple inquiries.

She noted too that families and survivors have been forced to fund their own legal battle all these years.

“This process has taken too long—those who campaigned for so many years deserve better,” says the watchdog’s deputy director general Kathie Cashell.

“I hope this report serves as a timely reminder of what happens when organisations focus on protecting their reputation rather than admitting their mistakes and acting to put things right.

The IOPC went on to endorse the Hillsborough law that has since been introduced due to the families’ campaigning. This imposes a legal duty of candour and transparency on all police officers and public officials going forwards, so that there are legal retributions for lying.

She says families would have had a “far less traumatic fight for answers about what happened to their loved ones” had that legal duty existed earlier.

The Guardian has a tribute report to all 97 people whose lives were cut short in the disaster. You can read about every single one of them: their personalities, passions, achievements, how loved they were, in the link below.

As the families have emphasised, there have been multiple inquiries, inquests and reviews since the 1989 disaster.

At each stage, victims and survivor sought accountability from authorities who should have protected those in the stadium that day.

Today’s report comes from the police watchdog, and just reiterates the same findings of blame established at the very first investigation – known as the Taylor Inquiry – and the second inquest – which blamed police mismanagement of the event and criticised South Yorkshire police for blaming Liverpool supporters instead of accepting responsibility.

Here is a full timeline of that long fight.

Under previous laws, officers who left the police service before December 2017 cannot face disciplinary proceedings.

That is why despite the findings today, no one will face action.

All but one of the officers had retired by the time the IOPC investigations began in 2012, and more than one has since died.

What the IOPC could do was make a determination on whether the officer had, or would have had, a case to answer for gross misconduct.

A case to answer means there is “sufficient evidence that a disciplinary panel could making a finding, on the balance of probabilities, of misconduct or gross misconduct”, says the IOPC.

But the watchdog did not have the power to decide “whether their actions amount to gross misconduct.

“Only a disciplinary panel can make that decision, after hearing all the relevant evidence.”

Bereaved families have said they are glad that the officers are now being publicly identified, for their failings over Hillsborough.

The IOPC has said the following officers would have faced gross misconduct cases:

• Supt Roger Marshall and Supt Bernard Murray, who had senior crowd safety roles

• South Yorkshire police assistant chief constable Walter Jackson, who was off duty but on call, and at the match.

• “ACC Jackson failed to organise and direct junior-ranking police officers to help save lives … ACC Jackson failed to take control of the disaster.”

• Sir Norman Bettison, who was a chief inspector at South Yorkshire police, would have faced allegations that he “provided misleading and inaccurate press statements” which minimised his role at South Yorkshire police after the disaster.

• He later became chief constable of Merseyside police and was “deliberately dishonest about his involvement in the disaster” when he applied for that role, the watchdog found. Liverpool MP Ian Byrne has written to the Cabinet Office calling for Bettison to be stripped of his knighthood.

• A mounted police officer, PC David Scott, would have faced the allegation that he lied when he said that his horse had been burned by Liverpool supporters.

The press conference was one of strong emotions – anger and sadness the most passionately professed.

Margeret Aspinall, Charlotte Hennessy, Steve Kelly and Sue Roberts expressed their “disappointment and disgust” that those who lied about the events of 14 April 1989, those who “covered up their mistakes”, were allowed to go on and live full lives despite failing their loved ones.

The watchdog’s report categorically outlines the mistakes made by the South Yorkshire police that led to 97 people being unlawfully killed on that afternoon in Sheffield, and the subsequent efforts to hide them.

But the four family members still feel that justice hasn’t been done.

Two things are clear, the families of those killed in Hillsborough will not simply be given the justice they desire, but they won’t stop fighting for it either.

“We’ll never get justice,” says Charlotte Hennessey, whose father James died at age 29.

“Nobody’s ever going to go to prison for killing them so we’ll never get justice and we knew that.”

She say she knew the report would follow the same factual findings from previous inquiries and inquests.

It confirms everything that relatives and survivors have known for years, she says, particularly the pattern of police misconduct, which was also determined at the second inquests.

It’s further validation, but “not new news”. It was always going to be this way, she says, a fight between South Yorkshire police and the families.

Steve Kelly, whose 38-year-old brother Michael died at Hillsborough, says today’s report must make it clear to lawmakers that the accountability burdens on police need to be strengthened.

“We didn’t have the right laws to help us at the time of the disaster and beyond,” he says.

“No one should be beaten by the passage of time. We should have truth, justice and accountability at least within a person’s life time.”

Several family members and victims have died in the decades since families have been pushing for accountability.

Sue Roberts, whose brother Graham died aged 24, speaks next and says: “It’s very frustrating but at least they [the 12 police officers] have been named now so their families can feel the shame.

“Sadly for far too many families, we’ve lost parents and they died tormented because they knew the extent of the cover-up.”

Other bereaved family members gathered have been taking questions from reporters at the press conference.

They’ve been asked how upset or frustrated they might feel, learning that 12 police officers would have a case to answer for gross misconduct but there will be no action taken due to the years that have passed.

Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James died, said: “It really makes you very, very angry when you think of all those 97 who died, unlawfully killed, and yet no one’s been held to account. To me that’s a disgrace.”

She adds that’s why it’s important to have the Hillsborough Law – the new legal obligation imposed on public officials and police officers to report with transparency and candour in their duties.

She believes today’s report will change things for other people, but “it’s going to do nothing for the Hillsborough families.

“We know that, we accept that, we understand that.”

“But what we’ve been campaigning for is to change things for the good of the nation and to me that is what this is all about.”

Hennessey goes on to address how through decades of campaigning, and even throughout the second inquests from 2014-2016, more evidence emerged of a police “cover-up”.

The IOPC report’s today finds that there were even more tampered statements from police.

“We were also shocked to learn that the IOPC discovered more than 130 South Yorkshire police officer statements that had been amended,” bringing the total to over 300, says Hennessey.

“From missing documents and video tapes to highly respected, high ranking police officers who ‘could not recall’, we will never truly know the full extent of South Yorkshire’s deception.

“But there is no hiding, there is no destroying and there is no way to cover-up that they failed their duties and then sought to blame the victims.”

The IOPC in its report found Duckenfield would have faced 10 gross misconduct cases, including for his notorious lie told as the disaster was developing, that Liverpool supporters had forced open an exit gate to gain entry to the stadium.

In fact Duckenfield had ordered the wide gate to be opened, to relieve serious congestion outside the ground.

No police officer has been convicted of any criminal offences in relation to the Hillsborough failings, and none faced disciplinary proceedings at the time they were serving.

Early on in her statement, Hennessey also addressed the officer in charge that day at Hillsborough, David Duckenfeld, who was found at the second inquest to be liable for gross negligence manslaughter.

Duckenfield was the officer who told the lie that Liverpool fans had opened a gate to get into the stadium that day, thus causing the crush. South Yorkshire police for years blamed Liverpool supporters for the disaster even when it was proven at the first inquest that the forces’s poor planning and crowd control was the chief reason.

Duckenfield faced criminal proceedings after the 2014-2016 second inquest’s findings but was acquitted in 2019.

Hennessey says the IOPC’s report confirms what she and other relatives and survivors knew all these years: that “David Duckenfield is a liar”.

His first thought as he stood over Liverpool fans, watching them fight for their lives, was to blame them and protect himself. Despite multiple opportunities over the course of 25 years… he chose to remain silent and watch as we fought for justice, truth and accountability.”

She says none of the families have or will accept his apology.

Charlotte Hennessy, whose father James was among the 97 unlawfully killed, says the watchdog’s report “confirms what families and survivors knew all along”.

She says the families welcome the IOPC’s conclusions in relation to 12 police officers that:“their actions or a lack thereof amounts to a case to answer for gross misconduct.”

While some conclusions are disappointing we respect that the process was investigated and accept the element of closure.

“Many remind us that Hillsborough was 36 years ago, but nobody is more acutely aware of that than those who lost loved ones and those who survived.

For all of these years we have longed for full disclosure.”

The press conference has begun with a statement from lawyers representing the families, summarising the watchdog’s findings that more than 100 cases of gross misconduct allegations were found against former police officers.

But there is no accountability, they say.

“Not a single officer will face a disciplinary action,” says the lead lawyer Nicola Brook. “No one will be held to account.”

She says the findings of the IOPC report is vindication for survivors who have “fought for decades to expose the truth’, but it also exposes “a system that allows officers to simply walk away, retiring without consequence”.

For the first time, authorities also examined the actions of West Midlands Police (WMP), the force tasked with investigating the disaster.

“We found this investigation to be wholly unsatisfactory and too narrow,” the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found.

“We also found evidence to indicate that the actions of two senior WMP officers were biased in favour of South Yorkshire Police.”

There has disappointment among some survivors that the IOPC has not criticised the West Midlands police investigation more extensively.

The watchdog did uphold some complaints, but said it had not found West Midlands officers were generally intimidating towards the survivors they interviewed, asked them excessively about supporters drinking, or were biased towards South Yorkshire police.

Just pulling out a key line from the IOPC report:

We found South Yorkshire Police (SYP) fundamentally failed in its planning for the match, in its response as the disaster unfolded and in how it dealt with traumatised supporters and families searching for their loved ones.”

‘Absolutely ridiculous that so few police face a case over lies and cover-up we’ve had to fight for 36 years’

David Conn

Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James was one of the 97 people unlawfully killed, has criticised the lack of accountability.

I cannot accept or understand how 97 people can be unlawfully killed, the police can lie, and nobody is held accountable,” she says.

“I recognise that the IOPC and Operation Resolve have worked hard and some of these findings are strong. But it’s absolutely ridiculous that so few people have been accused of gross misconduct for the lies and cover-up we’ve had to fight for 36 years.”

She was the last chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, and successfully campaigned with other families for the “Hillsborough law”, introduced into parliament by Keir Starmer’s government in September. It is aimed at deterring official cover-ups by introducing a duty of “candour, transparency and frankness” for police officers and public officials.

This morning, the IOPC deputy director general Kathie Cashell admitted that for some families the report has still left some questions unanswered.

She says it’s “deeply unsatisfactory that over 36 years later we are still looking for those answers.”

Rob Beckley, who previously headed the investigation into Hillsborough, said the report omitted the use of the phrase “cover up” as there was not a strong- enough legal basis for it.

But during the process of interviewing members of the police, he said “there was evasiveness, and there was defensiveness,” with senior figures in particular exhibiting what he described as a “veneer of cooperation”.

The Home Secretary has issued a response to the police watchdog’s findings:

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.”

Shabana Mahmood goes on to pay tribute to the families and survivors of Hillsborough.

She says they have faced “years of mistreatment and delay”, but thanks to their campaigning the government is introducing the Hillsborough Law which will place a legal duty of candour on public servants and authorities.

Mahmood notes there are now also laws in place which mean that police officers can no longer evade misconduct proceedings by retiring or resigning, “so these failings can never be repeated”.

As we reported earlier, the 12 officers identified today for gross misconduct cases will not face any sort of disciplinary proceeding because when the watchdog’s investigation began, they had already retired or had died, and under laws at the time, this precluded any disciplinary action.

The police watchdog in their report has found 110 cases against former officers, including for “falsehood and prevarication”, “discreditable conduct”, “abuse of authority” and “neglect of duty”.

The 366-page report marks the culmination of 14 years’ work by the IOPC, which describes it as “the largest independent investigation into alleged police misconduct and criminality ever carried out in England and Wales”.

Their investigation began in 2012 after the Hillsborough Independent Panel made landmark findings on police culpability, which led to the quashing of the verdict of accidental death from the first inquest in 1991.

The report has been delivered to bereaved families in the past days. My colleague Raphael Boyd is in Liverpool to hear from some of them at a press conference shortly.

But some have already told the Guardian that while they welcome the gross misconduct allegations, they are outraged the watchdog did not find more cases to answer against South Yorkshire police officers for falsely blaming Liverpool supporters.

The officer in command on the day at the stadium told a lie at the time that Liverpool fans had forced open a gate to get into the stadium and that had contributed to the crush.

Families and survivors have long described that lie, and other actions as part of a police cover-up campaign. They have spent decades fighting for the truth as to what really happened and for justice for victims and survivors.

The watchdog has found that 12 officers, all men, would have faced disciplinary cases of gross misconduct.

• Ten were in the South Yorkshire force, including senior officers responsible for safety at Hillsborough.

• South Yorkshire’s Chief Constable Peter Wright, in charge at the time of the disaster, would have faced six gross misconduct allegations, among them seeking to minimise police responsibility and deflecting blame on to the victims, Liverpool football club supporters.

• Two other men were senior officers in West Midlands police, which had been appointed to investigate the South Yorkshire force after the disaster.

• Mervyn Jones and Michael Foster would have faced allegations that they “failed to investigate effectively” and were “biased against supporters in favour of South Yorkshire police”.

In a press release, the IOPC deputy director general Kathie Cashell thanked those who supported the police watchdog’s investigation through sharing “very personal accounts”.

She paid tribute to the “courage they have shown in revisiting those events”.

The 97 people who were unlawfully killed, their families, survivors of the disaster and all those so deeply affected, have been repeatedly let down—before, during and after the horrific events of that day.

First by the deep complacency of South Yorkshire Police in its preparation for the match, followed by its fundamental failure to grip the disaster as it unfolded, and then through the force’s concerted efforts to deflect the blame onto the Liverpool supporters, which caused enormous distress to bereaved families and survivors for nearly four decades.

They were let down again by the inexplicably narrow investigation into the disaster conducted by West Midlands Police, which was a missed opportunity to bring these failings to light much sooner.

What they have had to endure over more than 36 years is a source of national shame.”

The full findings of the 366-page report can be found here.

The Guardian’s report of today’s landmark findings is below:

The police watchdog has identified 12 police officers who “have a case to answer” for gross misconduct.

But none will face disciplinary proceedings because they have all retired, or have died.

Peter Wright, the chief constable in charge of South Yorkshire police at the time of the disaster, died in 2011.

No police officer has been convicted of any criminal offences in relation to the Hillsborough failings, and none faced disciplinary proceedings at the time they were serving.

After 36 years of fighting for justice, the families and friends of 97 people killed in the Hillsborough disaster have received the findings of a 14-year investigation by the police watchdog into police conduct over the tragedy.

Twelve police officers, most of them senior, should have faced disciplinary cases of gross misconduct for failings related to the mass crush, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has ruled.

The watchdog found police officers sought to minimise the force’s responsibility and culpability by deflecting blame on to victims, Liverpool football club supporters.

In the inquiries that followed the crush, investigating police were also biased in trying to protect their colleagues, changing evidence and presenting conclusions which led to families describing the process as a police “cover-up”.

The IOPC said the 97 people killed, their families, survivors and all those deeply affected were: “repeatedly let down—before, during and after the horrific events of that day.”

“What they have had to endure over more than 36 years is a source of national shame.”

We’ll have rolling coverage of this major report’s findings, and the reaction from families.