Despite ACC Jackson’s confidence, Operation Resolve found there were in fact numerous gaps between the three Operational Orders, as well as important details that were not covered in them.
For example, all three Operational Orders included some instructions for managing the arrival of supporters by car, coach/minibus and by train. Between them, the Orders identified the police resources that were to escort supporters from the train stations to the stadium. However, none of the Orders included instructions about who these officers should report to when they arrived at the stadium and how they were to communicate the numbers and locations of arriving spectators to the PCB at the ground. Effective communication would have allowed the PCB to know the numbers and at what time supporters would arrive at the ground, so that resources could be deployed to effectively manage their dispersal there.
Similarly, there was no clarity about how any issues that emerged away from the stadium—whether in Sheffield city centre or on the main routes to the city—would be communicated to the PCB. In theory, this could have happened through the Force Control Room, which could have then alerted the PCB, but the instructions around this were inconsistent.
Both CC Johnson and Mr Hopkins also noted that SYP did not seek or use relevant police intelligence about the opposing sets of supporters to guide the planning. SYP did request information from the respective police forces—Merseyside Police and Nottinghamshire Constabulary—that regularly managed home games for the two clubs. SYP’s football intelligence team had an expectation, from previous experience, that Merseyside Police would provide little information. However, they did not make any additional or more specific requests to try to gain further insight.
Operation Resolve’s analysis of the F Division Operational Order against SYP’s Standing Instructions for the Policing of Football Matches identified some further gaps in its planning. These relate to issues that have been recognised in subsequent investigations as significant and that arguably should have been identified by the officer with overall responsibility for signing off the different Operational Orders (ACC Jackson).
For example, there were no instructions or contingency plans as to what action officers should take in relation to supporters who did not have a ticket for the match. After the disaster, many officers raised the presence of supporters without tickets as a factor in the crush outside the Leppings Lane entrance, but they were not given any direction to check supporters had tickets or instructed how to manage those without tickets. In his 1989 account, Supt Murray suggested that he did have contingency plans to deal with “large numbers of supporters without tickets”, but this was not in the Order or any other written documentation, nor mentioned in any briefings.
Even though the Leppings Lane entrance was a known bottleneck and, as detailed in chapter 2, SYP had proposed changes to the entrance area to address this a few years previously, there was no clear instruction in the Order on how to manage the crowd outside the Leppings Lane turnstiles—such as using mounted officers to help create queues.
Despite previous crushing incidents on the West Terrace, there was no instruction anywhere about monitoring the capacity of the pens on the West Terrace and no officers were deployed there. Two units of officers (known as ‘serials’ and typically consisting of 10–12 PCs with a sergeant or inspector in charge) were assigned duties to “maintain order on the terraces” once the match had begun, but their deployment was to the tunnels rather than the terrace itself.
In fact, the arrangements for monitoring crowd numbers as a whole were poor, with no one being allocated responsibility for doing so. Even though the crushing in 1987 and 1988 did not result in as many injuries as had been the case at the 1981 FA Cup Semi-Final, there was a recurring issue at high-profile games that senior officers should have been aware of. It should also have been addressed in debriefs after the 1988 game, but Operation Resolve has not found evidence that it was.
ACC Jackson, Ch Supt Mole and Supt Greenwood have all stated that they were unaware of the crushing at the 1987 and 1988 FA Cup Semi-Finals because they had not been informed of it through the post-match debriefs. Supt Marshall has stated he was not aware of any crushing at the 1988 game but also commented that he did not attend any debrief following the 1988 Semi-Final. This raises questions about the rigour of the debriefs after these games and the information flow within the force.
Crucially, none of the debrief reports from 1988 referred to the closure of the central tunnel either. This was an action that SYP officers had taken at the 1988 Semi-Final to restrict access to Pens 3 and 4 once they were full. However, there were no instructions in either the 1988 or the 1989 Operational Order about closing the central tunnel, or when it might be necessary.
The SYP senior officers on duty at the 1989 Semi-Final have largely suggested in evidence that they had no knowledge of this as a police tactic and that any tunnel closure must have been instigated by officers on duty nearby. By contrast, several more junior officers who described closing the tunnel at previous matches have indicated it was a known contingency or operational tactic for league matches, where the West Terrace was not allocated wholly to supporters of the away team.
In his evidence to the Popper Inquests, Ch Supt Mole agreed that the tunnel could be closed at league games. He said the standard approach was for the crowd to be directed to the centre pens, Pen 3 and Pen 4, in the first instance, but if these were full the tunnel would be blocked, and supporters would be directed to the outer pens.
However, he said that at games where larger crowds were expected, such as semi-finals, the whole of the West Terrace was allocated to supporters from a visiting club. On such occasions, the gates between the pens were open and supporters were allowed to ‘find their own level’. This theoretically meant that supporters were free to go wherever they wished on the terraces and to distribute themselves in the way in which they felt comfortable. In practice, moving between pens was difficult because there was just one narrow gate in each radial fence, at the top of the terrace.
In evidence to the Goldring Inquests, Ch Insp Beal commented that ‘find their own level’ was a flawed concept for big crowds.
