WMP’s responsibilities changed from 9 August 1989, when it was invited to undertake both the criminal and complaint investigations, which both SYP and WMP recognised were related. However, this necessitated WMP taking over the ongoing investigation of complaints about Ch Supt Duckenfield, which had been started by Northamptonshire Police.
As with the criminal investigation, WMP’s involvement was then delayed by discussions around the financing of its work. These were eventually resolved by late September 1989, but the investigation by Northamptonshire Police had essentially been on hold up to that point.
WMP formally began its complaints investigation on 27 September 1989. At this stage, SYP had informed WMP of complaints against six of its officers. On 28 September, ACC Jones contacted Northamptonshire Police to arrange the collection of all documentation it had gathered in relation to the complaints.
One of the first steps WMP took was to review the evidence it already had from supporters to identify whether there were any other complaints. The officer tasked with leading this review was D Supt Beechey.
D Supt Beechey’s involvement in WMP’s Hillsborough investigation has been subject to online criticism and speculation. Much of this relates to the fact he was associated with WMP’s SCS, which was disbanded in 1989 after numerous allegations were made of serious misconduct by officers working for it. Several convictions secured by the SCS were subsequently overturned.
In light of the online comments about him, and some complaints the IOPC received about his work, the IOPC examined D Supt Beechey’s role and professional experience. It established that D Supt Beechey’s association with the SCS lasted just two months and was in an oversight role rather than an operational one. His work in relation to the SCS was not under investigation and the allegations about misconduct within the SCS pre-dated D Supt Beechey joining.
The process D Supt Beechey devised for reviewing existing evidence involved re-examining any questionnaires and statements WMP had taken from supporters which had been identified on initial review as including an “adverse comment” about the police. Under the review process, the 3,000+ questionnaires and statements in this category were reassessed.
Many were immediately marked “NFA”, meaning that WMP would take no further action. These included cases where the adverse comment was a general observation about police failings that could not be attributed to particular officers, so could not readily be investigated as complaints.
Where the adverse comment was about a potentially identifiable officer, witnesses were recontacted by WMP to ask for further details. This process led to complaints being recorded against three further SYP officers, including PC Scott (the mounted officer who claimed his horse was burned by supporters’ cigarettes, as examined at paragraphs 10.54–10.64 of this report), about whom four complaints were recorded.
Though the process did lead to further complaints being recorded at the time, out of more than 3,000 adverse comments, there were in total only 18 recorded complaints. Some of these were based on multiple adverse comments about the same officer for the same incident. Nonetheless, the total number of recorded complaints was a small proportion of the total number of adverse comments.
