After the latest probe, families who lost relatives in the 1989 football stadium crush say they will never get justice.
A major report has found that there were widespread police failings both before and after the deadly Hillsborough football stadium crush that led to the deaths of 97 Liverpool supporters in northern England in 1989.
At the end of an investigation that began in 2012, the UK’s police watchdog concluded on Tuesday that 12 police officers would have had cases to answer for gross misconduct over the United Kingdom’s worst sporting tragedy.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
However, no action can be taken against them because they have all retired, with the victims’ families saying that justice will never be served.
“Not a single officer will face a disciplinary action,” said Nicola Brook, the lead lawyer for the families. “No one will be held to account,” she added.
Longtime campaigner Margaret Aspinall, whose 18-year-old son James was killed that day, expressed her anger, calling it a “disgrace to this nation” that the 12 officers could “walk away scot free with a full pension”.
Meanwhile, Charlotte Hennessy, who lost her father Jimmy in the crush, also complained that she and the others would “never get justice”.
The disaster happened at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield on April 15, 1989, when 2,000 Liverpool supporters were permitted to pour into a standing-only section behind one of the goals.
Almost 100 people died in the ensuing crush, as fans who had come to watch their side play Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semifinal were trapped against metal fences or trampled underfoot.
The police initially sought to blame the incident on drunken supporters, but this version of events was discredited by subsequent inquests.
A 2016 independent inquiry later ruled that the fans were “unlawfully killed”, saying the deadly crush was caused by police errors in opening an exit gate before kickoff.
In 2023, South Yorkshire Police admitted that their policing of the game had gone “catastrophically wrong”.
The latest report, published by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), said it had “found additional evidence” that provided a more “detailed understanding” of what happened at the stadium.
Of the 352 complaints about police actions that the IOPC investigated, the watchdog said that 92 of them were upheld or would have required individuals to explain their actions.
It also condemned a West Midlands Police review of the Hillsborough tragedy as flawed, describing it as being biased in favour of their police colleagues.
No officer has ever been convicted over the disaster, with David Duckenfield, the police commander in charge at the match, acquitted of manslaughter in 2019.
The victims’ families said on Tuesday that Norman Bettison, one of the 12 named officers, who went on to become head of Merseyside Police, should be stripped of his knighthood.
The British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called Hillsborough a “stain on our nation’s history” that “today serves as a stark reminder of one of the most significant failings in policing the country has ever seen”.
A proposed new law — dubbed the “Hillsborough Law” — is currently going through the UK’s parliament with the aim of introducing a legal duty of candour for public officials including police.
Brook, the lead lawyer for the victims’ families, said this was of “no consolation” to those affected.
“They are left with yet another bitter injustice: the truth finally acknowledged but accountability denied,” she said.
