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Twelve police officers would have faced disciplinary cases of gross misconduct for a catalogue of professional failings relating to the Hillsborough disaster if they were still serving, the police watchdog has said.
However, no former officer named by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) will face disciplinary proceedings because they have all retired. Some, including Peter Wright, the chief constable of South Yorkshire police at the time of the 1989 disaster, have died.
Ten of the men who would have faced gross misconduct cases were in the South Yorkshire force, including senior officers responsible for safety at Hillsborough. The IOPC listed six gross misconduct allegations against Wright , including for seeking to minimise the force’s responsibility and deflect blame on to the victims, Liverpool football club supporters.
Two other men were senior officers in West Midlands police, which was 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”.
The 366-page report, delivered to bereaved families in recent days, 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”.
The investigation, based in Warrington, began in 2012 after the Hillsborough Independent Panel had made landmark findings on police culpability, which led to the quashing of the verdict of accidental death from the first inquest in 1991.
The IOPC said in the report that it had found 110 complaints upheld or cases to answer against former officers, including for “falsehood and prevarication”, “discreditable conduct”, “abuse of authority” and “neglect of duty”.
Some people whose relatives died at Hillsborough told the Guardian they welcomed the findings, but were outraged that the IOPC did not find more cases to answer against South Yorkshire police officers for falsely blaming Liverpool supporters. Families and survivors have long described that as a police cover-up, and spent decades fighting for the truth and justice.
The IOPC has explained its view that in the absence of a duty of candour to positively assist an investigation, in 1989 the South Yorkshire force and its officers were not breaking the law or conduct rules by “presenting their best case” about the causes of the disaster, even though it involved withholding crucial information and amending hundreds of officers’ statements.
There has also been disappointment among 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.
Ninety-seven men, women and children were killed in the crush at the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium on 15 April 1989.
The jury at the second inquests into the disaster found in April 2016 a series of failings by South Yorkshire police, and that the victims were unlawfully killed owing to gross negligence manslaughter by the officer in command, Ch Supt David Duckenfield. The jury also determined that no behaviour by Liverpool supporters contributed to the disaster.
Duckenfield was then acquitted in a criminal prosecution in 2019. 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.
Following Operation Resolve, an investigation overseen by the IOPC into how the disaster happened, the watchdog has 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.
Supt Roger Marshall and Supt Bernard Murray, who had senior crowd safety roles, would also have faced gross misconduct cases, the IOPC said, as would the then South Yorkshire police assistant chief constable Walter Jackson. He was off duty but on call, and was at the match; the allegation against him was that: “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 and later became chief constable of Merseyside police, would have faced allegations that he “provided misleading and inaccurate press statements” which minimised his role at South Yorkshire police after the disaster, and was “deliberately dishonest about his involvement in the disaster” when he applied for the Merseyside position. The 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 last chair of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, Margaret Aspinall, whose son James, 18, was one of the 97 people unlawfully killed, has successfully campaigned with other families for a “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.
Aspinall said: “I cannot accept or understand how 97 people can be unlawfully killed, the police can lie, and nobody is held accountable. 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.”
The IOPC deputy director general Kathie Cashell said she sympathised with families who still felt they had not received proper explanations or justice, describing it as “deeply unsatisfactory” to be “still looking for those answers” 36 years on.
“There was absolutely a defensive approach by South Yorkshire police, there were allegations made about fan behaviour that have been repeatedly disproven. But there is a difference between that as a fact, and then finding individuals culpable for gross misconduct or misconduct,” she said.
“In order to meet the evidential threshold, it is a high bar to prove not just that [a statement] was a falsehood but that it was knowingly put forward as a falsehood.”
The IOPC made clear that it supports the Hillsborough law, saying in the report: “If such a duty had existed in 1989, it may have helped bring the full facts of what occurred to light far sooner.”
