The chief superintendent who oversaw the changing of South Yorkshire police officers’ accounts of the Hillsborough disaster has admitted some important facts were removed, and said the force’s lawyer gave improper advice.
Facts removed included that the police had a past practice of closing off a tunnel leading to the central pens of Hillsborough’s Leppings Lane terrace. That was not done at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, after a large exit gate was opened to allow a large number of supporters in, and 96 people died in a crush on the pens.
Donald Denton, who led a team suggesting amendments to officers’ accounts before they were sent to Lord Justice Taylor’s original inquiry into the 96 deaths at Hillsborough, admitted to “errors of judgment” in some of the changes that were made, but said these were “only a handful”.
Asked by Jonathan Hough QC, for the coroner at the Hillsborough inquests, Sir John Goldring, if the operation fulfilled the duty of the South Yorkshire police force to be open with the public, Denton accepted they fell short on “one or two occasions, but not many”.
He accepted that junior officers’ criticisms of senior colleagues in charge at the 1989 match tended to be taken out, while criticisms of Liverpool football club supporters were left in. Denton said this was because officers’ criticisms of fans tended to be fact, while their criticisms of their superiors tended to be comment.
Denton agreed at the new inquests into the 96 deaths that the initial rationale given by the force’s lawyer, Peter Metcalf of the firm Hammond Suddards, was that hearsay, comment and opinion should be taken out of the accounts, which would then be purely factual statements for Taylor.
The jury of seven women and three men were shown that Taylor’s inquiry team in fact said they could receive opinion and comment. Denton said they nevertheless wanted to remove it because otherwise inadmissible evidence would enter the public domain, possibly including criticism of “certain people who had no opportunity to challenge it”.
Goldring intervened, asking Denton: “Why was it for you to decide if Lord Justice Taylor was happy for this evidence to go in? What had it to do with you?” Denton replied: “It had very little to do with me, sir, but this was a question not only for myself.”
Hough took Denton through a series of junior officers’ statements where amendments were suggested, which he agreed included the removal of facts, not just opinion or comment. The accounts of two officers, Sgt William Crawford and Insp Harry White, included their descriptions of closing the Leppings Lane tunnel when the pens were full. These sections were removed by Denton and his team, after advice from Metcalf.
Denton accepted that the sections removed “included fact which should not have been taken out”.
Pete Weatherby QC, representing 22 families whose relatives died in the crush at Hillsborough, questioned Denton about another suggested removal of a conversation heard in the police control box by a sergeant, Michael Goddard.
Metcalf had said he was “not happy” with it and advised it should be omitted unless the two officers who had the conversation had mentioned it themselves. “How is that proper?” Weatherby asked Denton. “It isn’t, on the face of it, I must confess,” Denton replied. “I can see the point now.”
Weatherby added: “What is happening here is an attempt to airbrush an important part of evidence, if it hadn’t already got out of the bag.”
“I can see the point you are making,” Denton said.
The inquests continue.
