22 years on from the hillsborough disaster.

[Jason H]

He may not be solely to blame but he is partly to blame and thus should have been sentenced accordingly. Joke of a legal system once again IMO. People died unlawfully on that day and one or more people were responsible for ensuring that didn't happen and they failed and should be brought to book.

The British legal system is like bloody Brexit. Takes years and years and ends up not delivering what should have been.

Why should Duckenfield carry the can singularly for a catalogue of failures across the board?

It's not like, in any case, over 30 years he won't have had the images of what happened that day going through his mind and how he could have acted differently.

 

[Legohead]

Why should Duckenfield carry the can singularly for a catalogue of failures across the board?

It's not like, in any case, over 30 years he won't have had the images of what happened that day going through his mind and how he could have acted differently.

I don't doubt that there was a catastrophic catalogue of failures on that day made by a number of people and organizations.

Whoever was in charge of operations on that day however, without doubt should serve a custodial sentence. That's for a start. It's just another example of someone in a position of high responsibility who wants to have the status of that and the pay packet commensurate with that and then when something goes tits up they absolve responsibility to someone else instead of standing up and taking responsibility.

It's not about someone carrying the can, it's about the bloke paid to ensure everyone is safe being punished because he failed.

96 people died. The torment Duckenfield has had in the past 30 years has no relevance. He's partly responsible. Like I said, joke legal system.

 

[Colesman Ballz]

What is totally abhorrent was the extraordinary efforts that he and South Yorkshire Constabulary went to, to cover up their failures, rewrite history and shift the blame to the fans. They placed themselves above the law, no doubt partially as a biproduct of Thatcher's using them as her personal storm troopers, to crack miner's heads. And the "Iron Lady" was up to her neck in the cover up too !

 

[Legohead]

As someone born and brought up in South Yorkshire an in a mining village in the 70's / 80's and then I have experience to say that South Yorkshire police were then 'bent as a nine bob note' and that culture is still inherent within the force today to some degree, in my personal opinion.

A few years ago my mate went to house party of his girlfriends near Barnsley and some hoodie wearing numbnuts gatecrashed and he ended up getting his head stoved in with a metal bar for confronting them leaving him in hospital for quite some time, needing rehabilitation and medication. The handling of this investigation was atrocious and involved a couple of serious attempts to cover up police mistakes following the incident.

Not to mention a few years ago some officers using a police helicopter to watch people having sex. Freaks.

Anyway, that's a side issue. Duckenfield lied on numerous occasions to the jury regarding what went on, put the blame at the door of the fans in order to save his own fat arse he and deserves to see his days out inside.

So he's got PTSD. So what. He's been allowed to spend the last 30 years having nice food, having nice baths, watching footy on the box whilst having a beer, going on holidays etc etc but 96 people haven't been able to do this. For most people with PTSD i have the utmost of respect for and sympathy for but usually they are decent people and deserve understanding and help.

He's probably one of those many people who get accused of something serious and decided to use mental health as an excuse for mitigation and in order to get a lighter sentence.

 

[Oldsmobile-88]

On the BBC Sounds App there are podcasts about the day & aftermath using eyewitness testimony & the radio reports at the time.
Hillsborough : The Full Story.
You would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by Margaret Aspinalls story of when she heard that her son James was one of the victims.

 

[Oldsmobile-88]

 

[Oldsmobile-88]

As someone born and brought up in South Yorkshire an in a mining village in the 70's / 80's and then I have experience to say that South Yorkshire police were then 'bent as a nine bob note' and that culture is still inherent within the force today to some degree, in my personal opinion.

I had a disturbing encounter with South Yorkshire’s finest in the late 1980s..Told not to go into a pub before a game(it was 1pm) when i enquired why ? he replied that I risked arrest.
For what ? Oh I will think of something !.

I had friends in the old bill & was relaying the tale to them.They were not surprised & said that force area was known as rotten.

 

[Grecian2K]

Must be a bit careful when commenting on such matters but from what I read of it the judge's summing up seemed, in terms of lack of impartiality, on a par with the infamous one made during the Jeremy Thorpe trial all those years ago.

Mind you I'm not suggesting for a moment that allowing Mr Duck and Field to sit in the well of the court rather than the dock influenced matters. Nor the "rolled up trouser leg" and "funny handshake" at the start of each day's proceedings.

 

[Rosencrantz]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1200722609874309121

Interesting comments from David Conn regarding evidence allowed in the trial (and not). Perhaps a failure on the prosecution side to counter the defence argument of the Taylor Report clearing Duckenfield which was a very selective way of looking at the report.

 

[Oldsmobile-88]

32 years ago today.

A huge change in the way football was watched in grounds with the ramifications of this tragedy.

Hillsborough 15-4-1989.

John Alfred Anderson (62)
Colin Mark Ashcroft (19)
James Gary Aspinall (18)
Kester Roger Marcus Ball (16)
Gerard Bernard Patrick Baron (67)
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David William Birtle (22)
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