Regional police federation’s Hillsborough post ‘disgraceful’

A Liverpool MP has said a statement by a police body which criticised a new report into the Hillsborough disaster was “disgraceful”.

West Derby Labour MP Ian Byrne has written to the Police Federation of England & Wales to complain about the tone and substance of the South Yorkshire Police Federation statement released on Tuesday.

It claimed the Independent Officer for Police Conduct’s (IOPC) final report into police actions on the day of the disaster in Sheffield in 1989 was “opinion dressed up as fact” and “a waste of taxpayers’ money”.

Byrne, who survived the tragedy, said the IOPC report had been a “damning indictment” of the behaviour of many senior officers in the South Yorkshire force.

The watchdog found 12 officers involved in the stadium crush, 10 from South Yorkshire and two from the West Midlands force, would have faced charges of gross misconduct if they were still serving.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the South Yorkshire Police Federation said the long-awaited report “doesn’t help anybody involved in the Hillsborough disaster”.

It continued: “Former police officers, some of whom are very elderly and some who have sadly passed away, do not have any kind of due process or the ability to formally respond to the allegations made in this report.”

The federation said the report’s findings were the “opinions of the IOPC essentially being dressed up as statements of almost fact” and said former colleagues “should not face trial by media”.

“Our thoughts remain with all those affected by this terrible tragedy,” it added.

In a letter to the chair of the national Police Federation, Tiff Lynch, Byrne said the tone of the statement was “arrogant, dismissive, and disrespectful to families and survivors”.

He said he believed the statement “revealed a deep-seated contempt for the process of investigation into Hillsborough by the IOPC and for its findings”.

He urged the national federation to “make urgent representations” to colleagues in South Yorkshire to delete the post from all online platforms immediately.

He also asked that South Yorkshire Police Federation apologise for the pain their “callous” statement had caused.

The South Yorkshire Police Federation has been approached for comment.

Families of those who died in the disaster also criticised the statement.

Charlotte Hennessey, whose dad James died in the disaster, said she rejected the idea that officers had not had the right to reply.

Margaret Aspinall, whose son James was 18 when he was killed, said the officers were “lucky” to have grown old and the statement was an “insult”.

Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram had said he was left “staggered” when he saw the statement.

“Trial by media? When the Hillsborough families just days after their loved ones had been pronounced dead at a football match had a trial by media, they had sleepless nights, they fought for decades to clear the names of fans,” he said.

“It beggars belief that even to this day there are people who will not accept accountability for the deaths of 97 people.”