Hillsborough officer bullied into signing doctored statement, inquest hears
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Version 0 of 1. A senior South Yorkshire police officer bullied a constable to sign a doctored statement about the Hillsborough disaster, the new inquest into the deaths of 96 people at the football ground has heard. PC Michael Walpole told the inquest that he feared his job would be made “a misery” if he did not sign the amended statement, in which several of his original comments had been deleted, because he had seen other officers hounded out of the police in similar circumstances. Walpole said that at the time he believed it was “out of order” for his statement to have been doctored, and he initially refused to sign it. He was then required to go to South Yorkshire police headquarters at Snig Hill in Sheffield to meet a chief inspector, Alan Foster, with two other constables, Peter Smith and Maxwell Groome, who were also refusing to sign their changed statements. Walpole said he took the lift to the fourth floor of Snig Hill, where “all the bosses were”, and Foster told him he must sign the amended statement. He said he found the meeting very intimidating. He was asked by Pete Weatherby QC, representing 22 families whose relatives died in a crush at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough, about an account Walpole gave recently to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, in which he said: “I was bullied into signing the doctored signing.” He replied to Weatherby: “I’ll go with that, yes.” The comments deleted included Walpole’s observations critical of South Yorkshire police’s operation on the day, and he told the inquest he believed Foster wanted criticisms removed, although he could not recall him using those exact words. Walpole said “the most important factual part” of his statement had also been deleted – his recollection that in the buildup to the disaster another constable, Mick Buxton, had radioed the control room asking for the game’s 3pm kick-off to be delayed due to a crush of supporters outside the Leppings Lane turnstiles. The jury has heard that a sergeant, Michael Goddard, turned down that request, and the match went ahead at 3pm. At 2.52pm the officer in command of the match, Ch Supt David Duckenfield, ordered a large exit gate to be opened outside the turnstiles to allow a large number of supporters in. A tunnel leading to the crowded central pens of the Leppings Lane terrace was not closed off; most of the incoming supporters went down it, and the lethal crush happened in those pens. Walpole said Foster did “readily agree” for that recollection about Buxton’s request to be restored to his statement. But Foster insisted that the other deletions should remain. They included Walpole having originally written: “I did not hear any radio message for the entrance to the central pens to be closed off despite this being packed solid.” Other comments removed were contained in a long paragraph which was wholly deleted, including his observations that “there seemed to be no organisation or radio messages from about 3.15pm”; that the kick-off should have been delayed; that “something should have been done earlier to ensure that the central pens did not become overcrowded”; that the central pens should have been closed when full; and his view in the middle of the paragraph that the disaster was caused by drunk Liverpool supporters seeking to gain entry. Foster did not directly threaten him, Walpole said, but “the situation was very intimidating. I felt that I was under severe pressure to comply with the demands. I have known officers over the years have been hounded out of the police, which you could describe as constructive dismissal. So that was in the back of my mind when I was thinking: I’m going to have to sign this. The way they work is they make your life a misery, that you finish up resigning.” Walpole said later he suffered from post-traumatic stress and depression after the disaster, and that was also why he agreed to sign the statement. He said he had never again seen the first copy he was given, with the fact removed about Buxton calling for the kick-off to be delayed, and did not know if it had been shredded. When he did sign, he said, he was not shown his original statement, so could not see exactly which comments had been removed. Asked about advice from the South Yorkshire police solicitor, Peter Metcalf, of Hammond Suddards, that the sections removed were just comment, Walpole said it should be up to a court or inquest to decide whether officers’ opinions were important, not for the police to doctor statements. Asked for his view of his changed statement for Lord Justice Stuart-Smith’s 1998 judicial scrutiny of the case, Walpole confirmed that he replied: “It was an injustice for statements to have been doctored, to suit the management of South Yorkshire police.” The inquest in Warrington continues. |