A team of WMP officers first arrived in Sheffield on 18 April 1989. Early steps included securing the stadium as a crime scene, setting up an MIR and meeting with some of the senior SYP officers who had been involved in collecting evidence up to that point. During that morning, CC Dear took part in a press conference with Lord Justice Taylor, which explained the remit of the Inquiry and WMP’s role in it.
At 2pm, ACC Jones recorded a policy decision that “the limits of the South Yorkshire Police enquiry should be to the preservation of evidence and no further.” He then expanded on that in a subsequent policy decision the same afternoon, which again focused on “preserving evidence”; he added that no interviews would be undertaken at that stage.
On 19 April, WMP began to take over the investigation. The transition took a few days to complete. In a later letter to the South Yorkshire Joint Secretariat (the body that provided shared services, such as legal services, to various public authorities in South Yorkshire), Ch Supt Denton recalled that on 20 April, Detective Superintendent Roy Taylor of WMP (D Supt Taylor) instructed that all enquiries by SYP officers must be suspended. On 22 April, the SYP HOLMES account was closed and all data backed up to tape. The tapes were handed over to WMP and retained with other material. Then, on 24 April, all the documents and exhibits SYP had collated were also passed to WMP.
The IOPC has not found evidence to indicate there was anything inappropriate or unprofessional in this transfer of responsibility and evidence.
Alongside the activity in Sheffield, back in Birmingham, WMP had begun to plan its approach to gathering information. A team of senior officers worked together to identify lines of enquiry and consider staffing requirements. They produced a chart summarising these, which was included in ACC Jones’s policy book and is shown as figure 14A.
None of the topics included stands out as unusual or inappropriate in the context of investigating the disaster.
To gather information consistently from large numbers of witnesses, WMP chose to use questionnaires. These were a standard investigative tool, but the questionnaires in this case were mentioned in numerous complaints to the IOPC about WMP’s work.
WMP first became involved in investigating the Hillsborough disaster on 16 April 1989, when WMP’s Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear (CC Dear) was asked by CC Wright to examine SYP officers’ planning for the match and operational decisions on the day.
On 17 April 1989, it was announced that WMP had been further appointed by the Home Secretary to support Lord Justice Taylor in his inquiry into the disaster. Almost immediately after that, WMP was also appointed to support Dr Popper in the inquests. At this stage, no criminal or disciplinary investigation had been started.
Though the choice of WMP for these tasks was swift, the IOPC has not found any definitive explanation of why WMP was nominated, nor found any evidence to suggest that the decision was biased or inappropriate.
WMP was a large force with considerable experience of policing major football matches. It had five football grounds in its area, one of which was Villa Park, the venue for the other FA Cup Semi-Final in 1989. Further, CC Dear was a highly experienced officer who had been involved in several high-profile investigations and inquiries and was well regarded by the Home Secretary, Mr Hurd.
CC Dear and CC Wright did know each other through police circles, but when interviewed by the IOPC, CC Dear stated there was no particular friendship or professional relationship between them. They had not served in the same force at any point, and no evidence has been found to indicate they were close.
In addition to the witness appeal, the IOPC also had a second major source of new evidence: the policy books of ACC Jones, who led WMP’s work around the disaster.
This was a series of 14 physical notebooks into which were attached detailed, chronological records of ACC Jones’s correspondence, telephone calls and meeting notes throughout the investigations. They also included some policy decisions, often flagged as such, among more detailed entries. Each entry was numbered, and they appeared to form a continuous record of how WMP conducted its work, the decisions made by senior officers and its dealings with other parties, including SYP, the Taylor Inquiry team and Dr Popper.
The policy books therefore were of considerable importance to the IOPC’s investigation into WMP’s work.
The books were provided to the IOPC by ACC Jones in 2013. He had retained them in his personal possession when he left WMP and had not previously made them available to any other party, investigation or review of evidence relating to the Hillsborough disaster.
Though he had not been specifically contacted by the Stuart-Smith Scrutiny, there is evidence that he was aware of its work and aims. In 2011, the HIP contacted ACC Jones and asked if he had any relevant material for its work. He did not provide the policy books and advised the HIP that “all of the product of my involvement in the investigation” had been retained by WMP.
He later told the IOPC that when the HIP contacted him, he had forgotten he had them. He further said that the policy books were “my copies of material forwarded to the official Holmes Policy File”, adding: “the contents you have probably found are already known to you from the official file.” In short, he suggested that the policy books were only duplicates and that the material in them would all have been available elsewhere.
While the HIP did have access to copies of many of the documents in the policy books, it did not have all of them. Further, when the IOPC restored and examined the HOLMES databases used by WMP for its work around the Hillsborough disaster, it became apparent that ACC Jones had requested that some of the electronic policy files related to WMP’s investigation should be deleted from the system. Before doing so, he requested that printed copies were made.
An officer retaining potentially sensitive material relating to police work in their personal possession, and deleting material from the HOLMES system, are both unusual steps.
Further, given the allegations of a failure in the direction and control of WMP’s investigations noted in WMP’s referral to the IOPC, the deletion appeared particularly significant. It was therefore one of the issues raised in the Notice of alleged breach of the Standards of Professional Behaviour the IOPC sent to ACC Jones in January 2015.
ACC Jones responded to the allegation in a prepared statement to the IOPC. He stated that the deletion of the policy files had been agreed as they contained potentially sensitive and confidential material. However, he provided no further details, such as who this had been agreed with. He also said he did not have the printed copies of the policy entries.
Given the potential value of the policy files, and the strong indication that they were not the same as the policy books, the IOPC carried out or requested a number of further searches in an attempt to find them, in either digital or hard copy format. This included searches of police premises and obtaining a warrant to search ACC Jones’s home. The files were not recovered.
Though ACC Jones’s decision to delete the files was documented and included an instruction to retain hard copies, it was nonetheless highly unusual and leaves a gap in the IOPC investigation. It remains unclear what happened to the hard copies of the policy files.
The IOPC recorded a conduct matter around ACC Jones’s actions and completed an investigation into it. Having reviewed the investigation report, the IOPC was of the view that, if he had still been serving, ACC Jones would have had a case to answer for gross misconduct for discreditable conduct in relation to the deletion of the files, falsehood or prevarication regarding the retention of the policy books and neglect of duty, because he did not advise the Stuart-Smith Scrutiny of the books’ existence in 1997.
Though the IOPC had access to thousands of archive documents relating to the investigations, there was comparatively little evidence within these documents about how WMP conducted its investigations. To address this, in September 2013, the IOPC launched a witness appeal, inviting people who had any contact with WMP during its initial investigation to contact the IOPC and share their accounts and experiences. This became the largest witness appeal the IOPC had ever conducted. In total, 1,713 individuals responded, of whom 1,325 said they had some dealings with WMP. Many of those who responded had never previously given an account to any inquiry or investigation.
Every respondent who had contact with WMP was asked if they believed the account they gave to WMP adequately reflected their experiences on the day of the disaster. While over 800 respondents said it did, 490 answered this question “no”. These individuals were then asked why: a range of reasons were given, with some giving more than one reason.
Those who said “no” were contacted again by IOPC investigators who asked for more information about the reasons for their dissatisfaction. Before contacting them, the IOPC investigators examined archived material and the WMP HOLMES databases to retrieve any statement or questionnaire registered by WMP in the respondent’s name. Investigators then sent the respondent a copy of these documents or, where the documents had already been published on the HIP website, directed them to the relevant pages.
In many cases, the dissatisfaction expressed specifically related to the fact that the respondent recalled being interviewed by WMP but had not been able to find any documentation related to them. One reason for this was that, in many cases, the HIP redacted the names of witnesses before publishing the documents. Once they had confirmed that there were documents that related to them, many of these witnesses informed the IOPC that they had no further issues.
However, over a quarter of those who had engaged with WMP expressed concerns about the behaviour and manner of the officers who interviewed them. Other common concerns raised by respondents were that WMP officers:
interviewed witnesses, but did not take a formal statement from them
did not record witnesses’ evidence accurately
appeared uninterested in what the witness had to say
focused excessively on alcohol consumption
interviewed witnesses under the age of 18 without an adult being present
Arising from these concerns, the IOPC received 66 formal complaints relating to these issues. This meant that WMP’s approach to collecting evidence from supporters for the Taylor Inquiry was the most common source of complaints related to the Hillsborough disaster.
The IOPC’s terms of reference included investigating: The conduct of officers involved in WMP’s investigations. This will include:
a) the involvement of WMP in the decisions taken about how to gather evidence/obtain witness accounts b) whether police officers involved in this investigation put inappropriate pressure on any witnesses to alter their accounts or influence the content of those accounts c) whether the summaries of evidence WMP presented at the individual inquests were accurate d) whether there is any evidence of bias in favour of SYP on the part of those involved in or leading the investigation e) whether any accounts provided were deliberately lost, inaccurately recorded, amended, or mishandled (including not following up on key witnesses) f) investigating other recorded complaints or conduct matters about the actions of WMP in the gathering or presenting of evidence
WMP’s work in relation to the Hillsborough disaster consisted of several different investigative strands: gathering evidence for the Taylor Inquiry, a criminal investigation, a police disciplinary investigation and supporting the Popper Inquests. WMP’s work had previously received little scrutiny but was subject to numerous complaints. The IOPC therefore conducted a substantial and wide-ranging investigation that considered each of these strands separately. This chapter focuses on the work WMP did for the Taylor Inquiry.
What was found?
• In the weeks after the disaster, WMP interviewed more than 3,800 supporters who had been at the match. This was an extremely challenging task, requiring relatively untrained officers to interview large numbers of severely traumatised witnesses over a short period of time.
• There were occasions where officers did not show sufficient compassion for witnesses—particularly those under the age of 18—which undoubtedly added to their already considerable distress. However, the evidence, including from supporters and respondents to the IOPC’s witness appeal, indicates that this occurred in a minority of cases only and that, for the most part, WMP officers undertook this work professionally.
• Some of the main criticisms of the WMP officers involved in this task were that they focused excessively on supporters’ alcohol consumption and that they did not record supporters’ accounts accurately. Though the evidence indicates that there were instances where aspects of accounts weren’t recorded accurately, the IOPC did not find evidence that this was a recurring or widespread issue.
• Many supporters interviewed by WMP recalled being questioned extensively about their alcohol consumption on the day, and about whether other supporters were drinking. However, the questionnaires WMP completed with supporters and statements it took included very few comments about alcohol consumption.
• Despite the absence of evidence from supporters about alcohol consumption, the officers leading the WMP investigation appear to have reached a view that alcohol was a key factor in the disaster, and that the Taylor Inquiry did not consider it sufficiently. This became apparent in a memo sent from the most senior detective involved, D Ch Supt Foster, to the officer in overall charge of WMP’s work, ACC Jones, after Counsel to the Taylor Inquiry had made his closing comments.
• WMP did not interview SYP officers to take statements from them for the Taylor Inquiry. It is not clear that WMP ever committed to doing so, but nor is it clear that, as those leading the WMP investigation have claimed, they were instructed by the Taylor Inquiry to simply gather SYP officers’ accounts as evidence for the Inquiry.
• When WMP senior officers were alerted to the fact that SYP officers’ accounts were being amended—in some cases, significantly—before SYP submitted them, WMP did not take action to check the process or stop it.
Significant new evidence
In investigating the work of WMP, the IOPC had three significant sources of new evidence:
• The policy books of ACC Jones, who led WMP’s work around the disaster. This was a series of 14 physical notebooks into which were attached detailed, chronological records of ACC Jones’s correspondence, telephone calls and meeting notes throughout the investigations. Each entry was numbered, and they appeared to form a continuous record. Some of this material had been previously disclosed to the HIP, and there were other copies of some of the documents elsewhere in the archived material. However, there was also a large volume of material in the policy books that had not previously been considered.
• The responses to a major witness appeal, conducted by the IOPC in 2013, inviting people who had any contact with WMP during its initial investigation to contact the IOPC and share their accounts and experiences. This was the largest witness appeal ever conducted by the IOPC and was publicised across a range of channels, including national media and local media in Merseyside, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands. It was also publicised by Liverpool Football Club. Some 1,713 people responded, of whom 1,325 said they had some dealings with WMP.
• A set of 165 floppy disks—a digital storage technology used widely in the 1980s and 1990s—relating to the WMP investigation. These were in the South Yorkshire Police Archive, so had been available for review previously; however, they were not examined by the HIP, potentially because they were in a storage format that was no longer widely used. The IOPC employed a specialist company to recover all the material from these floppy disks into a format that could be read by today’s computers. Investigators then reviewed the material. While much of the material duplicated existing documents and records, the process did lead to the discovery of some new information, including correspondence between WMP officers that was not recorded elsewhere.
In addition, the IOPC took statements from more than 100 former WMP officers who had been involved in different aspects of the force’s work.
WMP was the police force responsible for investigating the Hillsborough disaster. Its involvement began on the day after the disaster and continued for almost two years. Its role and responsibilities evolved during this time, meaning WMP ultimately undertook four distinct, though overlapping, strands of work:
gathering evidence for the Taylor Inquiry from supporters who had been at the Semi-Final, the families of those who died in the disaster, police officers and a range of other witnesses
a criminal investigation
a police disciplinary investigation, overseen by the PCA, the national body that oversaw complaints against police officers at the time
supporting the Popper Inquests
Though some aspects of WMP’s work had previously been reviewed through the Stuart-Smith Scrutiny and the Goldring Inquests, the actions of WMP in relation to the disaster had not previously been the subject of a formal investigation. However, the HIP Report raised questions about the adequacy, integrity and professionalism of certain aspects of WMP’s investigations, including that, when interviewing Liverpool supporters in the aftermath of the disaster, officers focused disproportionately on alcohol consumption. Behind these questions was the underlying concern that WMP may have been biased in favour of SYP.
Recognising these questions and concerns, in 2012 WMP referred the actions of a small number of its officers to the IOPC for investigation. This referral led the IOPC to make the actions of officers involved in the WMP investigations one of the terms of reference for its independent investigation into the aftermath of the disaster. The IOPC subsequently received 118 complaints about the actions of WMP officers. A clear majority of these were related to the way WMP officers had collected evidence from Liverpool supporters. For example, 46 complaints focused on issues around how WMP recorded evidence and whether they had done so accurately. Fifteen were related to an alleged focus on supporters’ alcohol consumption. Seven covered WMP interviewing those under the age of 18 in an inappropriate way.
The IOPC upheld the complaint or found a case to answer in 41 instances.
It quickly became clear to the IOPC that examining WMP’s work as a single entity was neither helpful nor appropriate. The different strands of activity overlapped in terms of their timing but had separate aims and involved different officers. Separating the strands of work provided a degree of clarity in assessing the actions of the WMP officers involved against relevant standards. For instance, it made it easier to examine whether WMP conducted its disciplinary investigation to the professional standards that would have applied at the time, regardless of whether its work supporting Dr Popper was sufficient.
As well as investigating each strand individually, the IOPC has separated the work into different chapters of this report. This one focuses on the work WMP did for the Taylor Inquiry, covering the period from the day after the disaster, up to the publication of the Taylor Interim Report in August 1989.
The HIP had found documents that indicated a PNC check had been conducted on a person who made a claim for compensation after the disaster. In its report, the HIP raised the concern that more such checks may have been conducted. The IOPC examined the circumstances around this and sought to establish if any similar checks had been made.
The disclosed documents showed that solicitors acting on behalf of SYP wrote to CC Wells on 2 March 1995 to request details of the criminal records of a Liverpool supporter who had claimed compensation for loss of earnings as a result of the disaster. The request was fulfilled by an inspector who was part of the SYP CRO on 15 March 1995 and appears to have resulted in a complaint from the solicitor representing the claimant. A subsequent SYP note indicated that the matter was resolved between the two sets of solicitors, and no further action was required.
In the circumstances, there is no evidence to suggest that this check was carried out inappropriately.
IOPC investigators carried out a comprehensive search of the archived material available to the investigations to establish whether any form of check was conducted on any other individual who made a claim for compensation. Only one was found.
This took place in April 1989, just days after the disaster. It followed the receipt on 18 April 1989 of a claim for compensation against SYP and SWFC for injuries sustained. A document showed that both a PNC check and a CRO check were conducted on the claimant. The document did not explain why these checks were carried out or why a printout of the record was added to the claim file.
While it is possible that further records have been legitimately destroyed in line with retention policies, there is no other evidence to suggest that there was a decision or intention to conduct PNC checks on survivors of the disaster.
On the main HOLMES database used by WMP, the records for 94 of those who died suggest that CRO checks were carried out. A CRO check is not the same as a PNC check. It does not provide the same level of detail and typically only includes any unspent convictions.
The IOPC has not found any specific explanation for why or when CRO checks were conducted, nor any evidence of who conducted them or who instructed that they should be conducted.
This still does not explain how the solicitor obtained the information. There is no record of any direct contact between WMP and the solicitor, and the documents in his possession were PNC printouts, not CRO checks.
Despite pursuing multiple routes, it has not been possible to ascertain how or why he had obtained this information. The IOPC has not found any legitimate reason for it to have been in his possession.
However, the IOPC did find evidence to show that SYP should have conducted PNC checks on all of those who died, shortly after the disaster. This is part of a standard process for updating the PNC and removing the records of those who have died from it. Though there is evidence to suggest that some checks were conducted, they were not done systematically and consistently, as they should have been.
This became apparent when, in June 2014 and with the consent of families, IOPC investigators conducted PNC checks on those who had died in, or as a direct result of, the disaster. If the process had been followed correctly, no records should have been found, as their details should have been removed from the PNC. However, investigators discovered that, as of June 2014, details of nine of those who died had not been removed from the PNC.
Following the IOPC’s discovery, the PNC has now been corrected and the relevant records removed. The IOPC wrote to the families of all those who died, explaining what had happened and offering to inform them if details of their family member had incorrectly remained on the PNC. Separately, the then National Policing Lead for Information Management apologised to the families for this oversight. In a letter, he explained that though he was not able to identify precisely where the process failed, the failure did not appear to have been a deliberate act.
The IOPC sought to establish who carried out the checks, why, and how the information had been given to the solicitor. Investigators made several attempts to interview the solicitor, who had indicated he wanted to speak to the IOPC. However, he was in poor health and unable to answer questions. Members of his family, who had worked with him, and other former colleagues spoke to the IOPC and confirmed they had no knowledge of how he had obtained this information. They allowed the IOPC to take further documents from the solicitor’s home to review, but these contained no further references to the PNC checks.
Supt Marshall stated he had no knowledge of, or involvement in, any PNC checks being carried out in relation to the Hillsborough disaster. Investigators did not find any information to suggest otherwise.
Investigators also compared handwriting on the documents to a sample of Supt Marshall’s handwriting. The visual dissimilarities between the two were so apparent to the naked eye that no further comparative analysis was deemed necessary. Investigators asked the solicitor’s family if they recognised the handwriting as his. They all agreed it was not.
The format of the printouts showed that they were from the original PNC rather than from PNC2, which became available to police forces in 1991. This narrowed the time window; however, it also meant that there were no records to show who had conducted the search or produced the printouts. Under PNC2 and current procedure, the name of the officer who conducts a check is automatically recorded and stored.
IOPC investigators spoke to two former PNC operators at SYP to understand how the PNC was used by the force in 1989 and up to the launch of PNC2. The operators explained that PNC checks were typically conducted by trained staff at a dedicated terminal. As far as they could remember, in 1989 SYP had two PNC terminals in the CRO and an additional two in the Force Control Room. To request a check, officers in the field would call in via radio or telephone. They would have to give their name and collar number, plus the name and date of birth of the subject of the check. The information they requested was recorded on paper logs, along with the date and time the check was requested. The paper logs were kept for 12 months before they were destroyed. In line with this policy, the IOPC has not found any paper logs from the time.
The IOPC asked SYP officers interviewed if they had any recollection of PNC checks being carried out after the disaster. The only officers who referred to anything of this sort were some of those who had been involved at either the gymnasium or at the MLC in documenting the details of each of those who died in the disaster. They noted that the forms they completed included a tick-box referring to PNC checks. This was not ticked on any of the forms, supporting the accounts of the officers that they had not had access to the PNC when they were conducting this task.
The IOPC checked all the HOLMES databases used by SYP and WMP in relation to the disaster. There was no record in any of them of an instruction to conduct PNC checks.
This meant that the IOPC had no further avenues available to establish who conducted the checks or why, or who had provided the solicitor with the information.
