The interview (with the WMSCS)

The Police Interview:

Background:

The newspapers are full of speculation about the causes of the Hillsborough disaster.  Two opposing views are coming out, with the key question being how did the gate into Hillsborough come to be opened?  Was it opened by the police or was it forced open by fans?  If the police opened it, why did they open it?

At the time, the police were collating evidence and a hotline was setup for fans to ring and pass on their details.  I had three crucial bits of evidence that I wanted to share, namely

1.     The gate being shown on the TV, was not the gate through which the fans had come.

2.     The gate was opened more than once. 

3.     The final opening on the gate was done by the police / stewards and the gate was not forced open.

I had been the last fan through the gate the first time it was opened, and had waited by the turnstiles for my friends who had not got in.  I had seen the gate being opened from inside the stadium and knew the police/stewards had opened it without it being broken down or forced open.

So I rang the number, left my details and address and waited for the police to get in touch.  Just short of three weeks after the disaster a knock on the door and two Police wanted to chat about what I had seen.  It took just five minutes, they took some notes and they took my unused match ticket and arranged for me to go to their offices the next day for a formal interview. 

No problem and I went down pleased that my testimony was to be collated, along with the many other pieces of the jigsaw.  As an independent witness, I was sure my testimony would hold additional weight as I had no desire to paint anyone in a good or bad light.

The Interview

I went down to the office and met with the two officers who were to interview me.  They were part of the West Midlands Police, home of the notorious Serious Crime Squad, soon to be disbanded due to their involvement in a series of miscarriages of justice.  None of that was known to me at the time though.

The interview started easily enough, what was my name, my address, who did I go to the match with.  Just background information that was required for the statement.  Then the questioning started and I was asked to detail the day’s events, starting with how I had obtained my ticket and how much I had paid for it.  I explained I bought it from my mate Mike, who got it from his mate.  I paid £8 for it, the price being £6 for the ticket with the difference being for lad to buy himself a drink as a thankyou. 

Interviewer:  So your ticket was from a tout? 

Me:  No, it was from a mate, he got it from a mate, who got it from a player. 

Interviewer:  Why did you pay £8?  It was clearly from a ticket tout. 

Me:  No, I paid £8. £6 was for the ticket and a couple of quid to buy a pint as a thankyou. 

Interviewer:  So who is the ticket tout your mate bought the ticket off?  What’s his name?

Me:  His name is xxxxx, my mate paid him £8. 

Interviewer:  Can we speak to him to verify your story?

Me:  No, he’s dead.

Interviewer:  Dead?

Me:  Yeah, he died at the match….so you can't speak to him no.

The copper was lost for words at this point, recognising I was not going to name xxxxx as a ticket tout.  The guy was dead just three weeks and can’t defend himself.  No way am I labelling him a ticket tout and the copper realises he’s bitten off more than he can chew on this one.

Next up are our drinking habits and the copper asked me to detail mine and my friends alcohol consumption that day.

Me:  What’s that got to do with my evidence? 

Interviewer:  Were you drunk?  You’d been drinking hadn’t you? 

Me:  Yeah, we’d had a drink, but no more than normal.  What’s that got to do with my evidence?  I don’t understand the relevance?

Interviewer:  Look. I’m following guidelines, I can’t take your statement unless you give all the details of the day, including your drinking.   If you don’t tell me, how can we know if your other evidence is reliable?  If you were drunk how can we know you really saw what you claim?

Me:  Ok, if that’s how it works…..

Looking back, the guy was determined to get my drinking detailed, and so it was, the time of our visit to the Nursery Tavern, the quick pint in the Pomona and the stop at an off licence after we got off the bus, were all detailed, all apparently important background evidence.

Next up was our arrival at the stadium. 

Interviewer:  So you were drunk, did you stop to piss anywhere?  You or your mates…?

Me:  We weren’t drunk, we’d had a few pints, nothing over the top.  We went to the toilets in the pub, this is ridiculous….why are you asking me about how much I drank.  I’ve told you we weren’t drunk, we just a few beers.

So we arrived at the top of Leppings Lane, where upon we are met with a crowd of fans….now the fun really starts.  One of my observations I am determined to make is about the conduct of a mounted police officer outside the ground.  Whilst accepting he was trying to control the crowd, at the time, I was so disgusted with his conduct, charging into fans, that I had taken his number with the intention of making a complaint.  I took his number before anyone had died, been injured, so appalled was I at how he and his horse was used in the crowd.  In those days, fans were herded like cattle, and this guy’s actions did nothing other than to agitate fans who were trying to get into the stadium.  He made the crush outside the stadium worse and I was determined that this testimony be recorded, even if the police didn’t want to hear it / record it. 

When I gave these observations, the Policeman’s attitude changed markedly, and he started to contend every point I made.  How could I make a complaint about this guy, when I was clearly drunk?  Why was I complaining about the police…did I have a grudge against them?  I was clearly a student agitator who was “out to get the police”.  He was going to check my criminal record to see if I was a “Criminal with a grudge against the police”  He even questioned whether I was at the match, why did I not have “proper injuries”

The guy decided he didn’t like my evidence and started to aggressively contest every point I made.  On my notes that I had brought with me, he spotted my note that “Some police were drinking tea” – a reference to the many police who did nothing to help with the escape, and to aid he injured.  This observation didn’t go down well and he started to shout at me, that I was just a left wing student and did I know what “Wasting Police time” was? 

Interviewer:  “Yesterday I know what your t-shirt was – Free Nelson Mandela, you are just an agitator out to get us….What is it?  Are you a Socialist Worker?  Workers Revolutionary Party?  I will check, I will be checking which parties you are a member of…you can’t just make accusations against the police and get away with it…

Me:  “You can check all you want, I was at the game, you have my ticket?  What else do you want?

Interviewer:  “Proves nothing, you could have bought that, found it….are you a criminal too, got a grudge against the police?  I will be checking your details and I will be putting together a case against you….wasting police time, false allegations, you want to go to jail?

Me:  You can check all you want, I was at the match, and I will go through the CCTV frame by frame if I have to, I can find myself.

Interviewer:  So what were you wearing?

Me:  Denim jeans and a demin jacket.

Interviewer (sneering):  How convenient.  

The guy was off on one and had decided I was an agitator determined to make trouble for the police.  He told me I was lieing, that my lack of injuries were clear evidence I had not been at the game, that my early escape (I had been lucky to land within feet of the gate on the fence) was not possible, that I could not have been there and that he would be collating my evidence and double checking all the facts.  He even suggested I should leave the interview now and withdraw my statement, or face charges later.

The interview itself took 2 ½ hours to write out 6 pages of testimony.  2 ½ hours…. Why?  Because he didn’t like my testimony, it didn’t meet his expectations.  No my ticket wasn’t from a tout. the observations about the policing, my contention around the conduct of the policeman on the horse, all of this was not treated as my giving evidence, rather it was contended, challenged and was a constant battle and interrogation of my testimony and of my motives.

But the worst was still to come….the biggest problem he had, was my observations was around what I saw outside the ground.  The lack of barriers, no filtering, no police instructions were obvious, but my assertion that this was different to the previous year, was clearly second hand evidence.  I conceded this and so agreed that this was not evidence I could give.  Fair enough, but now he sought to contend my other observations, that clearly were relevant and were first hand.

What I saw on arriving at Leppings Lane was simple, some fans, a handful, were climbing over the turnstiles, over the top, about 8ft tall, and were then jumping down into the area behind inside the stadium.  This was done for two reasons, firstly the flow through the turnstiles seemed to have ground to a halt, and secondly, a dangerous crush was developing outside the stadium around the turnstile area.

The fans climbing over, were doing so with the consent of the police, some police officers, aware of the growing dangers, were helping pull fans up onto the turnstiles and were helping them down again.  The fans showed their tickets and no-one was stopped doing this.  It was done with both the consent and assistance of the police.  That is what I saw and how I described it.

Interviewer:  So you saw unauthorised entry into the stadium. 

Me:  No, I saw fans climbing over the tunstiles, with the consent of, and help of the police.

Interviewer:  So that was unauthorised entry, you are supposed to go through the turnstiles.

Me:  But it was with the consent of the police.  People were getting crushed and the police were helping them escape that crush.  That is not unauthorised entry.

We went back and forth for 10 minutes, my refusing absolutely to agree that I had seen or witnessed unauthorised entry.

Me:  No one broke in, all the people were doing was escaping a crush.  The police were helping them over. 

Interviewer:  How many did you see?

Looking back now, I remember the most at any given point was 1 or 2 fams.  There was no steam of fans, just a few getting up and over as best they could. 

So was my statement a true reflection?

My typed up statement says the following:

“At this stage I saw approx, fifty fans climbing over the side of the turnstiles”

Contrast this to my mates observation in his statement:

"I only saw one or two making entry in this way"

How is it that my statement records that I saw 50 fans climbing over, when I saw and said nothing of that kind?  There is no way is that what I saw or what I said. The only conclusion I can draw is that the police changed the tenant on what I said to misrepresent the facts.

Police writing on statement

My second specific complaint around my statement is that my statement has a hand written note that says

In L/L (Leppings Lane) witnessed unauthorised entry

This was absolutely not what I said in my statement and I had spent 10 minutes denying that was that I saw.  To write that comment on my statement is a complete lie as that is not what I said I had witnessed.

This is really important as the police were building a case of ticketless drunk fans “breaking into” the stadium.  Not only did the police change the observed number of fans I saw climbing over, but they changed the central tenant of what I saw, from entering with police consent to "unauthorised entry".

Wrapping up the interview:

The badgering, accusations and sneering continued for the rest of my interview and I think it did have an effect on my evidence.  For example one thing I remember well, wasn’t just that the police were slow to help people, they were initially actually trying to stop people escape the crush inside the stadium.  The police were pushing people back over the fence, kept the gates closed.  When I escaped through the front gate the policeman was trying to push the gate shut…he did close it after me.  This despite the cries and pleas of dieing fans.

None of that really made it fully into my statement; instead I was at the point of just wanting to get out of the interview, worn down and intimidated by the accusations and threats from the police interviewer. 

I was left thinking I was going to be investigated and possibly charged with "wasting police time".  The policeman told me he would later check my criminal record, my political affiliations and would look to cross check all my evidence against other people.  He would put together a case for consideration of “wasting police time”, though I didn’t have to sign my statement if I didn’t want to.

In my letter home, I asked my mother to ask my brother to keep my match programmes I had sent him, as this was one piece of evidence to back up my testimony….a clear indication that I was left with the impression that I was to be investigated further.

The compliant to the Geoffrey Dear

Unknown to me, my mother passed on copies of my letters home to a family friend, my Godfather, recently retired Chief Superintendent of the Special branch.  Concerned at my treatment he wrote a letter to Geoffrey Dear highlighting that I was neither a left wing agitator nor was I a criminal bearing a grudge. 

Following this complaint, the two officers involved (one of whom had said very little in the interview, other than to apologise for the conduct of the lead interviewer) both said that they felt I was “anti police” and doubted my testimony due to “inconsistencies” 

They also made reference to my “left wing type t-shirt"

No one spoke to me about the interview and/or apologised for their conduct.

Impact:

I feel that my evidence was changed.  I know I was threatened and intimidated and that some things I wanted to record were never recorded.

My evidence was mispresented as having seen “unauthorised entry” into the stadium despite my making clear I had seen no such thing

My evidence was both misrepresented and altered and I think my statement clearly had the potential to be used to back up the false allegations of fans “Breaking into” the stadium which the police wanted to make.  
--------------------