Hillsborough families find new, stronger voices in their fight for justice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/jan/01/hillsborough-families-west-midlands-police Version 0 of 1. Lord [Geoffrey] Dear, the chief constable of West Midlands police when his officers conducted the investigations into the Hillsborough disaster, considers it a high point of his career, arguing the force did an outstanding job in a short time for Lord Justice Taylor's official inquiry. That glowing view is bitterly disputed by families of the 96 people who died at Hillsborough, and by many who survived the disaster and gave their testimony to Dear's officers. Since the Hillsborough Independent Panel published its report on 12 September, families and survivors are increasingly coming forward to complain that the West Midlands force did not conduct a truly independent investigation. They argue that the West Midlands police were complicit with South Yorkshire police's campaign to evade its own officers' responsibility for the disaster, and seek to falsely shift the blame onto the Liverpool supporters themselves. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating West Midlands for several issues highlighted by the report, including whether officers "put pressure on three witnesses to change their statements." Five officers are individually under investigation, including Dear himself, and Mervyn Jones, who as assistant chief constable headed West Midlands' Hillsborough operations, according to Dear. The IPCC said it is examining: "General concerns in the report about inadequate investigation [by West Midlands police] and failure in its direction and control." Further allegations against the West Midlands police have since been made to the IPCC. They include that officers pressured other witnesses to withdraw criticisms of South Yorkshire police; that they concentrated on and sympathised with South Yorkshire police's discredited account that supporters were drunk and misbehaving; failed to conduct an investigation rigorous enough to result in criminal or disciplinary proceedings against anyone, and played a central role in the failings of the Hillsborough inquests which have now been quashed. The Hillsborough Family Support Group and Hillsborough Justice Campaign have also called on the IPCC to investigate the role of Detective Superintendent Stanley Beechey. He was under investigation himself in 1989-1990 over the multiple malpractice of the West Midlands serious crime squad, of which he was a former head. With 49 other serious crime squad officers, Beechey was stated by Dear to have been transferred to "non-operational duties". However, internal documents show that Beechey played a central, senior operational role in the West Midlands criminal investigation into Hillsborough, reporting to the Director of Public Prosecutions, then working for the coroner at the inquest. Family members whose children died at Hillsborough also believe their home telephones were tapped by West Midlands police. Hilda Hammond, whose 14-year-old son, Philip, died in the fatal crush in Hillsborough's Leppings Lane end, is haunted by an episode of interference on her phone the following spring, 1990. She was at home in Aigburth, Liverpool, talking to her friend who lived near Llanberis, north Wales. Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the voice of another mother, Jenni Hicks, whose teenage daughters, Sarah and Victoria, died at Hillsborough. Hicks was at home in Pinner, Middlesex, talking to one of Sarah's friends in Liverpool, a conversation Hilda Hammond and her friend could clearly hear. Hicks's then husband, Trevor, was the HFSG chairman, contesting the South Yorkshire police version of Hillsborough and calling for prosecutions. Phil Hammond, Hilda's husband, was an active HFSG member and later the chairman. Hilda Hammond is convinced their phones were tapped. "There is no other explanation for it – what are the chances of interference on the line, and it is another Hillsborough family?" she said. "It was horrible. All these years I have considered it the ultimate betrayal." The HFSG has formally requested the IPCC to conduct a full, transparent investigation into the allegation by Hammond, Hicks and others, of phone tapping. Dear told the Guardian it is "nonsense" to allege that families' phones were tapped: "I would have had to make the application personally," he said. West Midlands police were formally appointed by South Yorkshire police themselves to investigate Hillsborough, on 16 April 1989, the day after the disaster. When Taylor was asked to conduct the official inquiry, the evidence gathered by West Midlands was "made available" to him, as well as for South Yorkshire police's "internal purposes." Documents disclosed as part of the panel process are renewing suspicions that the West Midlands police were sympathetic to the South Yorkshire force. West Midlands officers used a standard questionnaire and checklist when interviewing witnesses, including Liverpool supporters who survived the appalling horror of the Leppings Lane "pens" 3 and 4, with people dying all around them. The checklist was heavily weighted towards the South Yorkshire police narrative, which sought to blame supporters' misbehaviour for the fatal crush. Under a heading of "Investigation," the possible categories were all aimed at supporters: "forged tickets, forcing gates, unauthorised access, alcohol" and "disorder". There was no list of possible misconduct by police or any other body. When witnesses gave evidence of police inaction, negligence, assault or abuse, as many survivors did, they had to be noted in a catch-all section headed: "Any category not specified." The questionnaire, while it did include questions about police control, asked in six separate places about whether supporters were drinking, fighting, gaining "unauthorised entry," and "disorder." Some survivors, wholly vindicated by the panel, are recalling with greater confidence their discomfort at how West Midlands officers interviewed them. Young men who had gone to support Liverpool in the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest but found themselves in a hellish experience, were told their parents did not need to be present at the interviews. Similar stories are emerging, of West Midlands officers telling survivors they were not in pens 3 or 4 where they said they were, that their story was not particularly bad or was irrelevant. One survivor of pen 3, who did not want to be named, says pressure was put on him, quite forcefully, to amend and withdraw criticism of South Yorkshire police officers. He has given a detailed account to the IPCC. No explanation was ever given to these witnesses about who would be called to give evidence to Taylor. Despite the South Yorkshire police's relentlessly made case that fans' drunkenness and misbehaviour caused the disaster, almost no evidence was found to support their story. Taylor cut through to the safety failures by Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield City Council, and previous crushes in the Leppings Lane end. He identified the South Yorkshire police's loss of control outside the ground, then the decision to open an exit gate to allow a large number of supporters in, and the failure to close off the tunnel leading to the already overcrowded central "pens," as the prime causes of the disaster. Dear regards Taylor's findings as vindication for the West Midlands police inquiry. He points to the tribute Taylor paid in his introduction to the West Midlands police for "their speed and dedication in gathering the evidence," and to similar approval given by the Football Supporters Association. After Taylor's critical findings about the disaster's causes, on 16 August 1989 South Yorkshire police themselves asked West Midlands police to investigate whether any criminal charges should follow. West Midlands police were also reporting to the Police Complaints Authority who would decide whether policemen should face disciplinary action. On 16 August 1989, Dear was asked if West Midlands police would conduct those investigations. Just two days earlier, Dear had disbanded his serious crime squad, after a string of miscarriages of justice and collapsed prosecutions. It had emerged that West Midlands officers had habitually fabricated evidence, including inserting confessions into suspects' statements. Questions about the squad dated back to 1975 when the "Birmingham Six" were convicted of the two pub bombings; they spent 16 years in prison before forensic tests revealed parts of their statements had been fabricated. The PCA and DPP announced investigations into these alleged malpractices within West Midlands police. Dear stated he was transferring 50 serving and former serious crime squad officers to "non-operational duties." That was widely understood to mean the officers would have no involvement in criminal investigations, given the allegations about malpractice. Dear later described the postings as "non-jobs." DS Beechey was a former head of the serious crime squad, at the time deputy head of West Midlands CID. While other senior officers were posted to research, personnel and road safety talks in schools, Beechey's posting was for "studying technical aspects of Hillsborough". Dear has said that involved examining fuzzy video footage. Beechey's "non-operational duties" lasted from 14 August 1989, when the serious crime squad was disbanded, until he was cleared of wrongdoing and returned to "operational duties" on 30 November 1990. Bereaved families at the Hillsborough inquest found him during that period playing a senior role at the now discredited "mini-inquests," held to give limited summaries of what had happened, which began in April 1990. The families were contacted by George Tomkins, a Liverpool man who claimed he had been framed by Beechey for a crime of which he was acquitted. Beechey was himself interviewed under caution about this allegation on 20 June 1990. He was never disciplined or prosecuted for any misconduct, but Tomkins sued for malicious prosecution, which West Midlands police settled, paying Tomkins £40,000. The families have been concerned about Beechey's role ever since the inquest, and the HFSG and HJC have asked the IPCC to investigate. Documents released to the panel, however, reveal that Beechey's role was more central than has been understood for 22 years. While on "non-operational duties" and under investigation himself, Beechey was in fact working as a senior detective in the West Midlands team investigating Hillsborough on behalf of the DPP. He liaised directly with the DPP and PCA – which was investigating him at the time. He was described in August 1990 as third in command of the West Midlands police's Hillsborough investigation team, working from the Nechells Green police station in Birmingham. West Midlands police have never acknowledged this, and in 2009 described Beechey as "a later addition" to the Sheffield coroner's team, his role: "Of a limited, overseeing nature". In fact he was appointed inquest manager, the second most senior police position, in April 1990, at the beginning of the inquest process. Attention has always focused on allegations of culpability among the senior officers who were in command at Hillsborough, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield and Superintendent Bernard Murray. But witnesses' statements reveal many different complaints were made about police officers' conduct. Several supporters gave accounts of a mounted policeman outside the ground swearing at and punching supporters; of police officers inside punching fans, swearing and being abusive, and assaulting or pushing fans back into the pens when they tried to escape to safety. There were many accounts of fans in the pens screaming for their lives, for the police officers around the pitch to open the gates at the front to allow people out, but failing to do so until dozens of people were already dead. In an initial report to the DPP, West Midlands police had decided to interview Duckenfield, Murray, Superintendents Marshall and Greenwood and just two junior officers, of whom the report said it was "very difficult to imagine" they ought to be prosecuted. The West Midlands investigators considered they should examine: "The extent to which the effects of alcohol played a part," and said "the role of supporters may not have been given sufficient prominence [by Taylor]". Thus, the panel noted: "While Taylor had dismissed the issues of drunkenness and ticketless fans as contributing factors to the disaster, the report put them back on the agenda." One of Beechey's key roles in the Hillsborough criminal investigation was to re-interview survivors who had criticised police officers' conduct, to see if they wanted to translate these into official complaints. The Guardian has seen 28 statements, from September 1989 to early 1990, in which Beechey personally interviewed witnesses. One was Eddie Spearritt. He was with his 14-year-old son, Adam, and was deeply traumatised by being unable to save Adam, who died, while Eddie suffered crushing injuries but lived. Spearritt maintained to Beechey a complaint against an officer, who he said refused to open the gate "despite my loud appeals directly to him and his close proximity to our position." Just one other witness's testimony was gathered to that officer's alleged failure to open the gate. The officer did not face charges for neglect of duty, or any other criminal or disciplinary offence. Another survivor, Damian Kavanagh, then 20, had described police refusing to open the gate at the front of pen 4 despite people screaming and shouting. He saw the gate opened briefly and two or three people get out, then: "They were pushed back in by the police and the gate was shut again." When the gate was finally opened, Kavanagh managed to scramble to it over people's heads. When he reached the gate, he had said a police officer: "Grabbed hold of me by my shirt and said: 'You fucking twat,' and tried to push me back in." Kavanagh managed to push past the officer and get onto the pitch, where he helped carry bodies on advertising hoardings across the Hillsborough pitch. On 3 November 1989, Kavanagh was visited at work by Beechey. He made a second statement, largely repeating his first, except it did not include the observation of people getting out then being pushed back into the pen. Beechey returned a week later, with a video showing the officer who had sworn and grabbed Kavanagh. Making a third statement, Kavanagh said in it: "I do not wish to make a specific complaint against this officer." The statements note Kavanagh "withdraws complaint". Kavanagh recalls he did not feel pressured to withdraw the complaint. However, he says he was not even made aware that West Midlands police had moved on to a criminal investigation He does not recall Beechey explaining the significance of making a formal complaint. "I didn't understand why he had come back for me to tell him everything a second time," Kavanagh said. "Now I feel very uneasy, I feel they were happy they had ticked me off, and there wasn't going to be a complaint against that officer." On 19 February 1990, Beechey met the Conservative MP Irvine Patnick at the House of Commons. Patnick was spreading stories of supporters' drunkenness and misbehaviour. He had been given by White's news agency, the source of the false allegations infamously published by The Sun, extracts of sworn statements by stewards, police officers and an ambulance officer. These included allegations against fans – although they also included observations of supporters attending to the injured and dead. Patnick wrote to Beechey, sending these statements, on 21 February 1990. He also enclosed a report by Michael Shersby MP, who was assisting South Yorkshire police's campaign against the supporters and the Taylor report findings. Patnick wrote to Beechey: "I do think that the South Yorkshire police's evidence was not fully taken into account at the [Taylor] inquiry and … I do so –hope something can be done to rectify this." It is not known if Patnick's briefing against the Liverpool supporters informed Beechey or the West Midlands investigation for the DPP. There is no record of Patnick being challenged about how White's had copies of sworn statements. Now, nearly 23 years later, the IPCC is investigating whether West Midlands police officers themselves "inappropriately" provided the statements to White's. Of Beechey's role, Dear says it still fell within his definition of "non-operational duties" and "non-jobs". "The main purpose of non-operational duties was to keep officers away from day-to-day detective work in the West Midlands, where they would have the 'fluidity' to potentially interfere with the investigation into themselves," Dear said. However, Dr Tim Kaye, who as a Birmingham University law professor conducted an independent investigation into the serious crime squad's activities, concluding in May 1991 that they were "alarming," rejected that outright: "'Non-operational duties' should not include carrying out interviews, because fabricating confessions was an endemic problem within the squad," Kaye said. "West Midlands police said Beechey was on 'non-operational duties', 'studying technical aspects of Hillsborough'. Since we now know that Beechey was interviewing witnesses, these statements sound like weasel words." While there is no evidence that Beechey did anything improper on the Hillsborough investigation, the HFSG and the HJC are calling for a thorough investigation into his activities and why he was given so prominent a role. Dear told The Guardian he agreed that the IPCC should fully investigate. On 30 August 1990, the DPP concluded "there is no evidence to justify any criminal proceedings" against South Yorkshire Police, Sheffield Wednesday, Sheffield City Council and "insufficient evidence to justify proceedings against any officer of the South Yorkshire police or any other person for any offence". The PCA considered 17 complaints from members of the public, brought to them by West Midlands police. They dismissed 15, then decided Duckenfield and Murray should be charged with neglect of duty. Duckenfield retired on medical grounds on 10 November 1991, then the PCA decided not to proceed against Murray alone. Dear asserts that the West Midlands investigations were "scrupulous" and he will be cleared of any fault by the IPCC. However, the Liverpool Labour MP Maria Eagle says she has always found it highly significant that South Yorkshire police appointed the West Midlands police to investigate Hillsborough, and were given all the documents when the investigation concluded. "South Yorkshire police were seeking to exonerate themselves for their own failings and blame supporters for the disaster," Eagle said: "My overriding impression is that West Midlands police were working not as independent investigators, but on behalf of South Yorkshire police." West Midlands police declined to comment, or explain its description of Beechey's role, while the IPCC investigation continues. |