BY GABRIEL PRINCEWILL
The shocking details that emerged in a court room in relation to police and the Hillsborough disaster has shed fresh light on the extent to which the police sometimes go to cover up some of the most reprehensible of conducts.
Top former police officer, Duckenfield disgracefully conceded lacking the correct experience to oversee the safety of 54,000 people, then went on to admit responsibility for their deaths. The levity of his admissions subsequently took a repulsive sour turn when he later admitted heaping the blame of Liverpool fans for gaining unauthorized entry through a large gate, despite the truth that the order for the gates to be opened came from he himself.
As the details of the horror that transpired that night were laid bare, every ounce of truth that exposed the deceptively callous plan for police to cast the blame on the deceased players, revealed an ugly side to the police institution we already knew from other unrelated events of the past we have heard before. Honorable police officers abound in numbers, but the bad apples among them have committed enough atrocities to tarnish their collective reputation almost irredeemably.
In fairness, this shameful set of revelations was reflective of a police force described as ”regimented”, having been under the auspices of chief constable wright, an officer known to be a dogmatic authoritarian, nevertheless regarded highly for his leadership in the force. Among the dead were teenagers, fathers and mothers, all of whom were categorically stated to have fallen victim to the heights of police incompetence and negligence. Some witnesses of the unthinkable calamity that fatefully befell their loved ones that day, suffered psychiatric illness resulting from witnessing the grotesque scenes of cracked ribs, arms and legs, and unsightly vomiting of friends and families.
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Even then, claimants for compensation had to be restricted to primary and secondary victims, so that only those in close proximity ti the scene or its aftermath, could claim for compensation. Close ties of ‘love and affection’ were also stipulated by the courts, to restrict the number of claimants in order to prevent overburdening the defendants. Loved ones who heard the news on television or radio were inevitably relegated to the lower tier of secondary victims who won’t qualify under the compensation scheme.
Finally, in what was the longest case of its type in the history of football, the truth and lies eventually surfaced in jaw dropping detail. Even the police team appointed to investigate allegations into the police cover up of those lower down the command chain, are themselves the subject of an IPCC investigation. A case in which police were constantly accused of dishonesty in concertedly covering their tracks, it was a heart breaking spectacle to see those ostensibly positioned to enforce the,law reduced to untrustworthy defendants, believed to have betrayed the position of trust invested in them.
We can optimistically believe that there are other police officers who would cringe at the lamentable details that unraveled in a historical case where innocent blood was shed for the sake of a game loved by most, and the negligence, unprofessional-ism, and lack of integrity of police officers not worth the honor and respect that ought to accompany their post.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster
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