Senior police chief admits Hillsborough report flattered police efforts
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Version 0 of 1. A senior South Yorkshire police officer who produced the force’s report on how 96 people died at Hillsborough in 1989 has admitted the report was wrong and favoured the police in some details, but denied a “deliberate plan” to blame alleged misbehaviour by Liverpool football club supporters for causing the disaster. Terry Wain, a chief superintendent in April 1989 , accepted under questioning at the new inquests into the disaster that the report’s conclusion included a defence of senior South Yorkshire officers’ actions, not just a “summation of the facts”. He said he could not explain why it omitted criticisms of the police’s own response to the disaster made by some officers or why it painted only a positive picture of the relief effort. Known now as the “Wain report”, the document included one officer’s description of Liverpool football supporters, who were attending the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest, as “animals”. It alleged fans were drinking heavily, fighting and that some without tickets were attempting to bribe turnstile operators. Overseen by Wain as a draft submission to the official inquiry by Lord Justice Taylor, the report stated that outside the Hillsborough ground, on the approach to the turnstiles allocated for Liverpool supporters “senior officers found themselves suddenly overwhelmed by several thousand spectators who had converged on the Leppings Lane entrance within a few minutes of the designated time for kick-off, many of whom being the worse for drink embarked upon a determined course of action, the aim of which was to enter Hillsborough Football Stadium [sic] at all cost; irrespective of any danger to property, or more importantly, the lives and safety of others”. Jonathan Hough QC , asking questions for the coroner, Sir John Goldring , told Wain that the inquests had heard that the congestion outside the Leppings Lane turnstiles did not happen just a few minutes before the scheduled 3pm kick off and Wain acknowledged he had read the evidence that it built up from half an hour before. “Perhaps [to have written] ‘a few minutes’ is wrong,” Wain said. “I don’t know.” Hough said: “Might it be said that the paragraph seeks to defend senior officers by portraying the situation as being sudden, unexpected and unforseeable?” Wain said: “That’s the picture that is being painted, yes.” Goldring himself pointed to a paragraph which began: “The senior officers in command did not shed their responsibility.” That, Goldring suggested, was “more than a mere observation”. Hough put it to Wain that it was “a defence of those senior officers”, asserting that their actions were responsible. “Yes, I agree with that,” Wain said. Describing the police response as the disaster was unfolding, when it was clear people had died in the lethal crush on the central pens of the Leppings Lane terrace, the Wain report stated that police officers “acted totally selflessly in their efforts to help and resuscitate victims, in conditions of congestion, threats, abuse, and in some cases physical violence”. Some fans were described as “worthy of the highest praise” for their help and assistance, but others were alleged to have been unruly, abusive and intimidating, their actions “clearly influenced by alcohol”. The report, Hough said, presented “both sides” of fans’ behaviour as the police saw it, but included only praise for the police. He said the jury, of seven women and three men, had heard that some police officers made criticisms in their written accounts of a lack of leadership by senior officers and of some junior officers for “standing around”, yet none of that was in the report. “Were you aware that some statements did include those criticisms?” Hough asked. “I think I was, yes, at some stage,” Wain replied. Asked if he could explain why the report painted only a positive picture of the relief effort by the police, and did not include any of those criticisms, Wain replied that he could not. Questioned by Peter Wilcock QC, for 75 families whose relatives died in the disaster, Wain denied that his job was to “hit back” at criticisms which had been made of the force. Wain said the “less than objective” sections of reporting was due to “the odd mistake” and denied Wilcock’s assertion that it was “a deliberate plan of action”. Wain said Norman Bettison, then a chief inspector in the South Yorkshire police, wrote the final section of the report. Bettison’s barrister at the inquests, Sam Green, representing the Police Federation, said that was correct, but that Bettison’s position is that he did not write the concluding paragraphs on which Wain was being questioned. Wain said he denied absolutely the evidence given by a former inspector, Clive Davis, that at a meeting on 17 April 1989, the Monday after the disaster, Wain had said the police were going to blame Liverpool fans. He said that meeting never happened. The inquests continue. |