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The first response from the PCB

  1. At 15:05:37—within a few seconds of the referee stopping the match—the Racal system recorded a message from the PCB to the Force Control Room calling for Operation Support to be initiated. Operation Support was a documented contingency under which all available SYP officers would be immediately deployed to assist with an incident. It was generally understood to be used in response to incidents of large-scale disorder.
     
  2. In his 1989 account, Ch Supt Duckenfield said that he called for Operation Support and evidence has not been found to suggest that anyone else was responsible for the initial request.
     
  3. Because implementing Operation Support would have a significant impact on operations within the SYP area, the decision to do so required authorisation from the ACC (Operations) or the designated duty chief officer. As ACC Jackson was at Hillsborough Stadium on 15 April 1989, he was in a position to give such authorisation, but he was not in the PCB at the time it was first requested. He arrived a couple of minutes later, of his own volition rather than as a result of a request from the PCB, and authorised Operation Support at 15:09:07. 
     
  4. At about the same time that the request for Operation Support was made, the PCB sent a radio message instructing all available officers at the ground to make their way to the perimeter track at the Leppings Lane end. The message has not been recorded anywhere, but numerous officers have described hearing it. SWFC CCTV footage suggests that the radio message was broadcast at about 15:05:41, as it shows that a number of police officers were standing outside Gate C at that time; they promptly made their way through the gate into the stadium.
     

  5. Though officers responded immediately, they did not know what they were responding to. Some indicated that the message referred to crowd trouble or disorder; others just assumed this was the explanation. When they saw supporters on the pitch, this appeared to confirm their views.

     

  6. Inspector John Beresford (Insp Beresford) was dispatched from the gymnasium with Serial 21, to help deal with unspecified “trouble” at the Leppings Lane end. He saw spectators on the pitch and others climbing the fence, but when he arrived at the corner of the North Stand and West Terrace, he could not see the cause. In his 1989 account, he said: “The only police action which seemed obvious to me was to form an open cordon across the touch line from the northwest corner flag towards the goal mouth.” Though Insp Beresford did not explicitly state the purpose of forming such a cordon, it is a relatively standard police tactic to manage the movement of a crowd. On this occasion, the logical reason for establishing one would have been to prevent a pitch invasion. 
     
  7. CCTV footage at 15:06:19 shows Insp Beresford appearing to organise officers into a cordon. However, in his 2013 statement, Insp Beresford recalled that as he neared the goalmouth, he realised that supporters were injured and that “this was no pitch invasion but a rescue operation.” He said his officers quickly left the cordon to assist in different ways.
     
  8. BBC footage shows the cordon being formed at around 3.06pm but becoming fragmented by about 3.13pm. By 3.16pm, it had fully dispersed.
     
  9. The formation of this cordon, and others in different locations later, have been the subject of complaints from supporters, on the basis that officers should have been engaged in more practical assistance. The evidence suggests that officers in the cordons felt the same way; they had responded on limited information and followed instructions, but once they saw what has happening, many chose to leave the cordon to assist in the rescue effort.
     
  10. However, there is also evidence of a further issue emerging: that officers, lacking instruction or coordination, were getting in each other’s way in their frantic rescue efforts.