Hillsborough papers: Calls for 'essential prosecutions'

Trevor Hicks, Hillsborough Families Support Group: ''We have to rely on the integrity of the police''

A criminal investigation into the police handling of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster must happen, a former chief constable has said.

Richard Wells, who led South Yorkshire Police from 1990 to 1998, said charges were "absolutely essential" after a damning report into the tragedy.
It found police changed statements and tried to blame fans for a crush which led to 96 fans dying.
The current chief constable said if the law was broken there should be charges.
The report also found that 41 of the 96 who died had the "potential to survive", and calls have been made for fresh inquests.
David Cameron said Attorney General Dominic Grieve would review the report as quickly as possible in order to decide whether to apply to the High Court to order new hearings.
Trevor Hicks, whose two daughters died in the disaster, said he wanted to see new "proper, fair and honest inquests".
The ninety-six Liverpool fans died after a crush on overcrowded terraces at Sheffield Wednesday's ground during the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in April 1989.
Following the publication of the Hillsborough Independent Panel's report into the incident, David Cameron apologised to victims' families for the "double injustice".
He said they had suffered both in the "failure of the state to protect their loved ones and the indefensible wait to get to the truth", and in the efforts to denigrate the deceased and suggest that they were "somehow at fault for their own deaths".

"The more the state organisations accept fault and open completely their books to proper examination, the quicker everything can happen”

            Lord Falconer

Mr Wells said police forces across Britain had "a culture of authoritarianism, defensiveness [and] excessive secrecy" at the time of the disaster.

He said he had "swallowed, to my great regret now, the prevailing account - that the statements had been looked at for criminal justice purposes and emotional, non-evidential material had been removed".
'Emotional ordeal' Speaking to the BBC's Newsnight, current Chief Constable of South Yorkshire David Crompton said he would look at the report's findings that police officers carried out national computer checks on those who had died in an attempt "to impugn the reputations of the deceased".
"My position is a very simple and straightforward one, which is that if people have broken the law then they should be prosecuted," he said
"It doesn't make any difference whether they're a police officer or anybody else."
The families have always challenged the original inquest, which concluded that all the victims had been dead or brain dead 15 minutes after the game had kicked off at 15:00.
By analysing post-mortem test results, the Hillsborough panel's medical adviser, Dr Bill Kirkup, said they had found that up to 41 of the 96 who died could have potentially been saved if they had received treatment earlier.

 

 Many of the 96 victims could have potentially been saved, the panel found

Mr Hicks said this finding must lead to new inquests being opened into the 96 deaths.
He said it was "important to all the families that a new verdict is put in place and we have proper, fair and honest inquests now".
"It will be another emotional ordeal for us all, but again it's part of the due process that needs to be gone through."
Lord Falconer, a former lord chancellor and justice secretary who has been advising the Hillsborough families on legal issues, said how long it took to set up a new inquest "very much depends upon whether organisations such as the South Yorkshire Police accept that there needs to be [one] and accept their culpability in relation to it".
"The more the state organisations accept fault and open completely their books to proper examination, the quicker everything can happen," he said.
'Operated in good faith' The Hillsborough panel's report found police and emergency services had made "strenuous attempts" to deflect the blame for the disaster on to fans and that 116 of the police statements identified for "substantive amendment" had been "amended to remove or alter comments unfavourable to South Yorkshire Police".

South Yorkshire Chief Constable David Crompton: ''If people have broken the law, then they should be prosecuted''

Liverpool fans and relatives of the victims have campaigned for 23 years to find out exactly what happened on the day of the disaster, which saw the biggest loss of life at any UK sporting event.
An independent inquiry led by Lord Chief Justice Taylor in the immediate aftermath of the disaster found the main cause had been a failure in crowd control by South Yorkshire Police.
In 1997, the then Home Secretary Jack Straw ordered Lord Justice Stuart-Smith to review "new" evidence which had not been submitted to the inquiry and also dozens of police and witness statements, which had been altered.
Lord Justice Stuart-Smith concluded that the evidence did not add anything significant and that while statements should not have been edited, this was simply an "error of judgement".
Mr Straw said Lord Justice Stuart-Smith had "operated in good faith and I greatly regret that he could not get to the bottom of this".
"I regret that I had not spotted this - if I could turn the clock back, I would do so and some years of heartache for these families would have been saved."