Retired Inspector Dukinfield is suffering from PTSD apparently.

Bless.

 

Delayed onset like, I'm sure

 

Should he be renamed Duckinblame?

 

custodial sentence is what he should be suffering with.

hth

 

You following David Conn on Twitter? Spent the last two days swearing at my computer screen.

I have sympathy for anyone who was at Hillsborough suffering from PTSD. It was one of the most traumatic events on our soil since WWII. And that sympathy even extends to completely incompetent police inspectors, if that diagnosis is legitimate. But he wasn't in the crush with the fans. He didn't lose friends and family that day. He wasn't one of the police officers, St John's Ambulance workers, ambulance service, medical workers or just the general public who were down on the field close up to what went on, witnessing the horror, helping people as they drew their last breath. He was up in a box and when people were dying he was ordering his officers to push those trying to escape back in to the crush.

Either he is a psychopath and was deliberately trying to kill people, which I don't think any of us believe, or he just couldn't get to grips with what was going on. He was under-prepared, incompetent and he couldn't actually see the horror of it all. If that's the case, if he couldn't see the extent of the devastation, why is he claiming PTSD? What he's actually feeling is guilt and I've no sympathy for that.

 

Yes. A bit wary of taking the twitter feed as gospel - as some stuff isn't given context - especially when folk are making political points - but Dukinfield seems to embody everything that was (is ?) wrong with policing and those in charge of public bodies - an arrogance and contempt for the public at large which defies belief, and only now, years later when he can't be sacked does he decide that he lied. And he's sorry.

I could rant on but it's all been said. I'm just desperately sorry for those that lost loved ones ad have had to suffer ever since, compounded by the state lying about it all.

 

I agree and clearly should have some punishment for his actions which were criminal in that he didn't do his job - but even accounting for his own ineptitude this looks like a failure of systems. A system that placed one man in control of everything and gave no other 'get out' if he (for instance) happened to drop down dead that afternoon. Nobody else was able to affect events, it all fell on one man who was doing a terrible job of getting things right.

 

The thing that's struck me most from all this is that what happened to the Liverpool supporters could have happened to any of us who supported football teams during that period. It didn't happen to Liverpool fans that day because they were drunker than most, more badly behaved, because more were turning up without tickets than usual or more were turning up later than usual. They were average. Some had been for a drink, many hadn't. Some were shouting and carrying on, many were clam and relaxed. Some turned up as it got towards 3 o'clock, many got there much earlier. A few didn't have tickets, the vast majority did. They were just the same as any other club travelling in numbers for a big away match.

They didn't die that day because the authorities were significantly less prepared than usual either. The fact is, they'd never been prepared, we'd all been lucky because they'd been winging it for years. It was a disaster that had been waiting to happen for a long, long time. Decrepit old stadium, thousands of people treated like animals, a police force that were far more concerned with preventing fighting and keeping fans off the picth (which even back then wasn't nearly as common place as people will have you believe) than crowd safety, and no plan other than "get 'em through the turnstiles and they'll sort themselves out, they always do."

Disaster had been averted at other games, not due to any sort of plan being put in place prior to the match, but because the person in overall charge could think on their feet. At Hillsborough there was someone in charge who couldn't. Dukenfield is/was incompetent. He should never have been in that position. Some of the responsibility lies on his shoulders, without doubt. But we should never have been in a situation where one man has to make split second decisions under pressure in order to save dozens of lives. He should have been following an already agreed plan not coming up with ideas off the cuff. His incompetence would then have been taken out of the equation and he could have been found out when ballsing up his own initiative to introduce square hats for all officers, not when thousands of lives were at stake.

 

I've said pretty much the same above.

 

Agree totally. Stoke City for the 3-3 Cup Game could have been exactly the same.

We were held outside Stoke for ages, then the buses got there late and there was zero control, just a copper on horseback telling us off for being late...

They put us down the side of the pitch in a cramped terrace - mad crush.

Football fans were just 2nd class citizens.

 

A very measured analysis of the era.

 

I hate hierarchy - should be flattened out wherever and whenever possible. I even think there's a case for not appointing a manager - but that's another topic

 

Re: Just a note retired Inspector Dukinfield is suffering from PTSD apparently.

What I have found surprising during the years of debates and accusations re the Hillsbrough disaster, and equally the Bradford City inferno, is that no mention is made of the perimeter fencing preventing any escape. All subsequently and serenely removed without mention.

 

I find his excuses to be a real insult to those who actually have PTSD.

 

Re: Just a note retired Inspector Dukinfield is suffering from PTSD apparently.

There wasn't a fence at Bradford if there had been the carnage would have been even worse.

 

Re: Just a note retired Inspector Dukinfield is suffering from PTSD apparently.

Aye, as the Popplewell report made absolutely clear, recommending all fences were removed from football grounds. Unfortunately it was completely ignored

 

Re: Just a note retired Inspector Dukinfield is suffering from PTSD apparently.

Suffering from being a lying **** more like.

The Stoke 3-3 was a pretty hair raising experience remember trying to clear some space round an old bloke who was feeling ill and nearly getting crushed as a few toppled over

 

The problem with Duckinfield is that he was the man on the ground, but the systems failure would probably go above him to the top of SYP at the time. In fact, they probably go right up to the home office and the chances of those really responsible for the systematic policing failures at the time getting what they deserve are slim to non-existant.

That is not to excuse his incompetence and lies afterwards trying to cover his ass, but many of us would do the same if we were put in a position we weren't really ready for.

 

I'm not following this closely so my question is not meant to be provocative - it's a genuine enquiry for your objective opinion.

Does the enquiry feel like it's genuinely uncovering new information which will change the worlds view of what happened that day or result in changes to policy and procedures which will save lives.

or does it feel like it is simply re-aligning the official view of what happened with what people already actually know. For instance the revelation (was it really a revelation) that Duckenfield only had 15 days experience in managing football matches isn't really going to precipitate a change police policy - I would imagine that a policy that match commanders should have at least X number of matches under their belt before being handed an FA cup semi-final would have already have been implemented as a result of the Taylor report.


The reason I ask is that the bits and pieces coming out on mainstream media - however terrible and infuriating - are not really unexpected - they are shocking - but not really suprising.. if you get me.

 

Re: Just a note retired Inspector Dukinfield is suffering from PTSD apparently.

Jesus, it doesn't bear thinking about how much worse Bradford would have been if there had been a fence on that stand, as most of the people in that stand were families and older people. But the main thing about Bradford was the age on the newspapers found understand the burnt out stand. It just showed the contempt for footy fans that the club hadn't bothered clearing up rubbish under a wooden stand for decades.

But, the fences is where it starts to get more complicated. The fences at Hillsborough were on the away end. To say I spent a lot of time working at that ground in the 80's and regularly went into the Kop to treat casualties, I really can't remember whether there was a fence on the home end. Away ends nearly all had fences though and there was a reason for that. In the seventies, more than a minority of football fans acted like animals, so without the fences there would have been mayhem at many matches. Liverpool fans were amongst the worse. In fact, I recall sitting nervously in the corner of the Kop at the semi final the previous year when a significant number of Liverpool fans climbed over the fences at the Leppings Lane End and went to the Kop to kick off with the Forest fans. The police eventually got that under control, as fortunately the Forest fans didn't get involved.

But this is where football fans have to take their part in the responsibility for the disaster at Hillsborough, not necessarily the ones there on the day (although had they turned up on time and queued like they would at any other type of event than a footy match the disaster would never have happened), but the behaviour of fans in general that led to the fences being there in the first place. Furthermore, I can guarantee you that the first reaction the coppers would have had when they saw Liverpool fans climbing over the fence would have been "oh no, not them again". So they would have approached the disaster area with the midset that it was the Liverpool hooligans kicking off again and that notion never left some of them, even when they realised what was going on.

Lets face it, that's the first conclusion we jumped to when the news filtered to Oakwell. A bloke stood near me on the Ponty had a radio and said there'd been a disaster at Hillsborough, crowd trouble, a wall had collapsed and they were laying the dead on the pitch. Well, you can imagine my reaction to that, with my mum, my girlfriend and my mates all there in a first aid capacity. It was only later that the full story emerged. But everybody's first reaction on hearing something had gone wrong at Hillsborough was to presume crowd trouble amongst the Liverpool fans. This undoubtedly helped the police when passing their untruths to the media, as it was a pretty easy conclusion to sell to the British public.

But as I always say, yes, a significant minority of football fans caused trouble at football matches, a lot of football fans turn up late with several pints in them, particularly for big matches like that, there were almost certainly a few people there without tickets trying to get in using whatever means necessary (remember seeing the scousers risking their lives climbing through the windows at Wembley 2 years earlier?) and football fans, particularly ones with a few pints in them, are unlikely to queue like the crowd would at an opera, BUT only one group of people were there that day being paid to look after the safety of all the people in the crowd. And what's more, I understand the police are, or were, all paid overtime for football crowd duties. It was the police who had the responsibility to take measures to prevent the build up outside the ground and there were numerous ways they could have done that. Similarly, at the point they opened the gate outside it was the only thing they could do to prevent someone dying outside, but they should have considered what would happen inside the ground once they did open the gates and put something in place to prevent a couple of thousand fans all marching forward into one, already overcrowded pen.

The comment Jay made further up is bang on, and exactly what I said to my missus yesterday. That could just as easily been any of us at that match, because the contempt from the football authorities, the poor state of the grounds and the contempt and incompetence from the police made it almost inevitable that something like that would happen one day. In fact, it nearly was us, at Stoke a couple of rounds earlier.