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Conference trucks::football;1

Title: Soccer Football Conference
Notice:Don't forget your season ticket.....
Moderator:MOVIES::PLAYFORD
Created:Thu Aug 08 1991
Last Modified:Fri Jun 06 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:608
Total number of notes:85903

147.0. "Hillsborough Revisited." by BAHTAT::BLYTHE (Ee bah gum th's trouble at t'mill) Tue Jan 14 1992 10:36

    The Hillsborough affair seem to be drawing to an end for some (not the
    victims families though). There are to be no prosecutions of the Police
    Officers who had a great part in causing the disaster, so the whitewash
    is almost complete.
    
    jb.
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147.1BLKPUD::WATTERSONPOne more mint Mr President ?Tue Jan 14 1992 11:0518
    
>>>>    so the whitewash is almost complete.
    
    I totally agree - not one police officer has been sacked or even
    charged, including the moron in charge who thought the people climbing
    the pitch to escape the crush were 'hooligans trying to stop the
    match'.
    
    I know people in Liverpool who are still suffering the effects of
    Hillsborough - I also believe there is a lad still on a life support
    system somewhere.
    
    It's sickening to think of the time, effort and money spent on trying
    to find scape goats for Heysel - yet all the evidence was there to
    prosecute the guilty at Hillsborough and NOTHING gets done.
    
    Paul
                     
147.2Life SupportBAHTAT::BLYTHEEe bah gum th's trouble at t'millTue Jan 14 1992 11:085
    The lad on the life support system is a native of Keighley, and he has
    been on the life support system at Airedale General Hospital since
    April 1989, there are legal moves afoot to switch it off.
    
    jb.
147.3'twas a sad sad day...TRUCKS::SANTTue Jan 14 1992 11:2332
    
    	I'll enter an opinion on this, not based on actual experience - I
    	wasn't there and I thank God for that - but on information given to
    	me by a police officer friend who has been privy to the internal
    	enquiry "findings"..
    
    	There is no doubt that the disaster was a dark day for football and
    	a personal tragedy for many people, and not only those who lost
    	friends and relatives. I don't know how best to try and put
    	something so terrible anywhere near right again..my own feeling is
    	that it can't be achieved..
    
    	But there was an enormous incompetent misjudgement under the duress
    	of the occasion by the police chief in charge, and that was the
    	finding of the police enquiry. Many officers who have seen the
    	report are disgusted at the way it has been handled - again, these
    	are the words of an officer who does know - and many in the force 
    	feel that criminal proceedings *could* have been brought by the 
    	victims.
    
    	It's no comfort to those that have suffered to see the negligent
    	people get dragged through the courts and publicly pilloried, but
    	if it served to avoid ANY possible future repitition or similar
    	incompetence then it should have happened.
    
    	It won't though, and no one will be sure what really happened that
    	day. The police enquiry did draw attention to the behaviour of
    	*some* of those in the crowd trying to get in at the last minute,
    	but that the police should have dealt with the situation long before
    	it became so fraught.
    
    	Andy - with black arm-band on..
147.4ASKFOR::HAIGHA vision of guerrilla goodness.Tue Jan 14 1992 11:336
    
    	Is this not normal practice? If the Police are at fault, wait for
    the original uproar to die down and then quietly slap a couple of
    Occifers on the wrist and point them outside again?
    
    		Steve
147.5One bad orchard (sometimes)ARRODS::OHAGANBThe Voodoo Rhythm DevilsTue Jan 14 1992 13:5014
    Generally speaking, as if I would, you can't really hope for much 
    from a enquiry carried out by the Police Complaints Authority can 
    you? A body, independent of the police, is needed, and is long
    overdue. 
    
    And it's not as if football fans don't already know this without 
    the example prompted by Hillsbrough. You just have to ask 
    yourself how effective your complaints would be should you happen 
    to encounter some of the more nastier aspects of Football policing 
    on a Saturday afternoon. Must'nt forget to mention "only one bad
    apple" etc for those who view comments like these as being unfair to
    the Boys in Blue.   
    
    Barry.