Twenty-three years ago the world was shocked when a crowd crush killed ninety-six soccer fans at Hillsborough stadium in England. Just as the game was starting an overflow crowd was still surging outside the ground and the police made the mistake of ordering an extra gate to be opened. This caused a fan stampede through a narrow tunnel and the surge onto the open terraces saw people physically crushed to death and others die of asphyxiation.
The tragedy did not end there. Police confusion and command mistakes saw a big fleet of ambulances stopped and prevented from attending to the injured and many of those deaths could have been prevented by prompt attention. In every aspect - Hillsborough was a disaster !
That event on April 15, 1989 is only now fully coming to light. It seems that the police coldly and callously altered witness statements and contrived a bogus scenario to shift the blame onto Liverpool soccer fans. They suggested that the crush was caused by " soccer hooligans " who attacked other spectators and fed the media lurid stories of these hooligans desecrating the dead by stealing their wallets. The police closed ranks - and openly lied to the enquiry that followed.
Finally, ageing consciences could stand the lies no more and the truth has emerged, causing the British prime minister to apologise to the nation.
These revelations will be a relief to those who lived through that dreadful day twenty-three years ago, but the fact that it disclosed a common thread that seems to run through the world's police forces is a great cause for concern. Whenever an event occurs that shows the police in a bad light there seems an automatic response to use the power of the constabulary to deflect the blame to others.
It raises an interesting question. Can the average person ever remember an occasion when the police readily and openly admitted that a mistake had been made that lead to the death of another person or a situation of loss - and apologised ?
It simply doesn't happen ! Be it an accidental shooting or the crash of a police car, the first thing that happens is that the police close ranks and fabricate their version of the event. Independent witnesses are " pressured " to confirm this official view - and in many cases the evidence presented to an ensuing enquiry is a complete tissue of lies.
Theoretically, the police are supposed to be our source of truth and justice. In reality, they are a law unto themselves and they take care to erect a shield to deliver a sanitised version of events that screens out any wrongdoing on their part.
Sadly, as in the Hillsborough case, this propensity to alter the facts starts at the very top of the chain of command. The morals of the police hierarchy of this world are no better than the morals of the gangs they are paid to control.
Time after time we read of news events in the media - and the report of police involvement is taken with " the proverbial grain of salt " because we know the police culture abhors blame. That is a simple fact of life - and we have no reason to believe it will be different in the future !
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