The IOPC is required by law to produce an investigation report for each complaint or conduct matter it investigates. These reports are designed to allow the IOPC decision maker to reach a view on appropriate outcomes and, with the decision maker’s additional input, to inform the relevant police force or police and crime commissioner of the IOPC opinions and decisions In the Hillsborough investigations, there are 161 such reports; several conduct reports covered multiple conduct matters, for example where a group of officers were under investigation for the same issue. Complainants and the officers under investigation have been informed of the outcomes, as have those identified as interested persons in any of the individual investigations.
However, none of these reports, on its own, can address the wider scope of the IOPC and Operation Resolve investigations, or respond to the full terms of reference for these investigations. This report therefore fills this gap. As well as explaining the outcomes of complaints and conduct matters, it summarises what the investigations found in relation to unresolved queries around the disaster. It also gives an overview of topics related to police conduct that have not been addressed by previous inquiries or investigations, such as the work of WMP in the aftermath of the disaster.
Notes on language and terminology
All statements and accounts are cited verbatim in this report. In some cases, they include spelling or typographical errors, which are reflected in the quotations.
Unless specifically stated, all police officers are referred to by the rank they held at the time of the disaster. Similarly, if an officer’s name has subsequently changed, they are referred to by the name they used at the time of the disaster.
During the course of this investigation, the IOPC was established, replacing the IPCC. The IOPC took on responsibility for any ongoing IPCC investigations. For clarity, throughout this report, all references to the independent investigation into police conduct in the aftermath of the disaster refer to the actions of the IOPC rather than the IPCC, even where those actions took place before the IOPC was established.
