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The accuracy of officers’ accounts submitted to the Taylor Inquiry

  1. More than 700 officers had their accounts submitted to the Taylor Inquiry. In the course of its investigation, the IOPC received specific complaints about the accuracy of the accounts given by seven officers. In two further cases, the IOPC identified material that raised questions about the accuracy of the evidence the officers concerned had presented.
     
  2. Each of these instances is covered in a complaint or conduct report, and the complainants and officers concerned have been informed of the outcomes.
     
  3. This section summarises some of these, where the matter under investigation is relevant to the overall understanding of the disaster and specifically to allegations that police officers exaggerated or fabricated stories about the behaviour of supporters.
     
  4. Though normally a plain clothes officer, Detective Constable James Oakes (DC Oakes) was on duty at the 1989 FA Cup Semi-Final in uniform. He was part of a serial of officers stationed inside the turnstiles at the Leppings Lane end and was close to exit Gate C when it was opened. After the match was halted, DC Oakes assisted in the rescue effort.
     
  5. He produced an initial account dated 17 April 1989 that is the source of the complaint against him. In this account, DC Oakes described his experiences on the day, from 8.30am until a post-incident debrief in the North Stand. He referred to attempting to resuscitate two supporters. He wrote that as he tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate one of these two, the supporter “was vomiting beer.”
     
  6. When this victim’s blood alcohol level was tested during the post-mortem, it was found to be zero, a point emphasised by Dr Popper during the original inquests.
     
  7. However, the comments made by DC Oakes became the subject of a formal complaint from the family, that the account was fabricated and that it had been drafted in a way that conveyed the impression that supporters were drunk. 
     
  8. For health reasons, DC Oakes could not be interviewed by the IOPC or called to give evidence at the Goldring Inquests. However, after a lengthy period of correspondence, he agreed to provide the IOPC with a written response to the allegations.
     
  9. In the written response, DC Oakes explained the reasons he believed the supporter had vomited beer but acknowledged that this was incorrect and stated he regretted that this comment had caused undue distress to the family. 
     
  10. In response to the allegation about the overall tone of his account, DC Oakes commented that everything he wrote was “what I believed to be true and not influenced by anyone else.” The account included references to supporters being intoxicated, attempting to enter the ground without tickets and being aggressive outside the ground. Many other SYP officers also made similar comments in their accounts; DC Oakes’s account does not stand out as giving markedly more emphasis than others to such comments.
     
  11. There were two specific points he mentioned that were not supported by other evidence; these were a comment that he saw two supporters being arrested for selling forged tickets, which did not appear in any arrest records, and another that he saw a supporter pick up a match programme from next to someone who had died.
     
  12. Police Constable David Scott (PC Scott) was a mounted officer on duty outside the Leppings Lane entrance. BBC cameras recorded him swinging his arm and striking a Liverpool supporter in the crush before the game. This footage was shown on news reports in the days following the disaster. In his original written account, PC Scott explained that he had acted to protect his horse from supporters who were threatening to burn it with cigarettes. He added that when he inspected his horse later, he found lumps on its back legs and said the horse’s coat appeared singed.
     
  13. His account was supported by the statement of Phillip Webb, a farrier who looked after SYP horses. Mr Webb stated that he had seen multiple circular burn marks on the horse. Both repeated their claims in subsequent statements.
     
  14. The injuries to the horse were accepted as fact by the Taylor Inquiry. WMP investigated complaints about the actions of PC Scott and sought, unsuccessfully, to identify the supporter who had been struck. No disciplinary proceedings were recommended, but PC Scott received management advice about his future actions.
     
  15. However, after PC Scott’s account and Mr Webb’s statement were published online by the HIP, the IOPC received a complaint that they may have been exaggerated. The complainant suggested that if the injuries were as bad as claimed, the horse would have needed veterinary treatment, but there was no record of any such treatment. He also suggested that SYP would have taken photos of the injuries; again, there were none.
     
  16. To investigate the complaint, the IOPC reviewed the video footage of the incident involving PC Scott but did not see any signs of the horse being in distress, as might be expected if it was being burned. Investigators then took statements from other members of SYP’s Mounted Section. Though some recalled hearing about a horse being burned, none had seen the injuries. The SYP press log showed that the head of the Mounted Section had expressly denied that a horse had been burned but said it had been threatened. 
     
  17. The IOPC appointed an expert witness—a professor specialising in equine surgery—to review the evidence and explain how a horse might react if it was burned. She stated she would expect a horse being burned multiple times to show signs of distress, such as kicking out or swishing its tail. She saw no video evidence of either. To assess the likely impact of a cigarette burn on a horse’s skin, she conducted a series of tests (with all appropriate consents) to the body of a horse that had recently been euthanised. These included applying a lit cigarette to the horse’s skin: it did not result in the kind of marks that Mr Webb had described.
     
  18. The IOPC then reinterviewed PC Scott and Mr Webb. When shown some of the evidence that the IOPC had gathered, Mr Webb changed his account and stated that he was not sure if he had actually seen any burn marks. He said it was possible he had made the statement to WMP because he was disgusted at what he had heard from PC Scott about the burns, rather than having seen them himself. PC Scott made no further comment. 
     
  19. The IOPC also established that PC Scott and Mr Webb knew each other socially; PC Scott attended Mr Webb’s wedding.
     
  20. The claim that supporters burned a police horse with cigarettes was a damaging allegation that painted a picture of supporters being either sufficiently cruel to deliberately cause the injuries, or sufficiently insensitive as to not realise that they were doing so. The evidence gathered by the IOPC indicates this alleged incident did not take place. 
     
  21. Based on the evidence gathered, in June 2017, the IOPC referred PC Scott and Mr Webb to the CPS, requesting a decision on whether both individuals should be charged with the criminal offences of perverting the course of justice and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. In December 2017, the CPS announced that no charges had been authorised against either individual. The decision was challenged under the Victims’ Right to Review Scheme. The evidence was reviewed by a different prosecutor, who upheld the CPS decision.
     
  22. The evidence was also set out in a separate complaint report. Having reviewed it, the IOPC’s view was that, if he had still been serving with the police, PC Scott would have had a case to answer for gross misconduct, for falsehood or prevarication.