The Hillsborough inquest jury’s verdicts will launch an unprecedented scrutiny of our police services, its responsibility and its accountability (Report, 28 April). A significant factor in the behaviour of South Yorkshire police through this disaster, and at Orgreave before it, is police culture. There is a substantial body of knowledge on the phenomenon of “cop culture”, much of it researched by ex-police officers, now academics, that nuances our understanding away from caricaturing or stereotyping.
Multifaceted layers and sub-cultures, contrasting and conflicting, characterise police culture, and thus lived police values and assumptions. There are two mistakes that we might make in rushing to judgment. The first is to imagine that nothing has changed, and canteen culture remains. And the second is that all has changed.
Some of us in higher education are fortunate to work with police officers whose organisational and self-criticism are models of reflective practice and integrity. This discernment can accompany popular judgment as well: there were many people on the streets of Merseyside earlier this year to honour the funeral cortege of PC Dave Phillips, killed in the line of duty. The police service should draw confidence from the ability of the public to know right from wrong; the public is ready to be reassured that its police service does as well.
John Phillips
Liverpool Hope University
• Ruth Goddall (Letters, 28 April) says we should spare a thought for David Duckenfield. In our professional lives, we all make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes have serious consequences, rarely do they result in the loss of so many lives. It seems he was an inexperienced commander parachuted into that role. This was not unusual in policing in 1989 – and sadly is still not unusual in policing today. I can understand that Duckenfield made operational decisions that in hindsight were flawed. As a recently retired chief superintendent, what I cannot understand are the lies and deceit that followed. Those responsible for these lies have brought shame on the service. Duckenfield is not alone in culpability for this, the police service is: in particular his senior officers then, and those who followed.
Nick Mason
Holbeach Fen, Lincolnshire
• Reading Suzanne Moore’s column on the Hillsborough verdict (28 April), I am reminded of a community policing meeting I attended as a local councillor in the West Midlands in the 1980s. At the end of the meeting, many of the uniformed officers dashed to the bar located in the police station. After the revelations from this verdict, we should be asking whether or not this drinking culture still persists in the police force.
Tessa Harding
Ely, Cambridgeshire
• The chilling shot of South Yorkshire police lined across a football pitch, watching impassively as men, women and children died, reminds us of the genesis of this tragedy. It was born out of the police force’s contempt for ordinary people, nurtured by the Thatcher government in order to destroy the miners, and brutally rehearsed at Orgreave. Those now appearing to want to recreate those days may bear a heavy burden of responsibility.
Nigel Gann
Chiselborough, Somerset
• What has been forgotten is that the Hillsborough tragedy was the culmination of decades of bad design and crowd mismanagement at football grounds. In the 1970s and 80s, more people were killed in disasters at football grounds than in all of the UK’s dangerous industries. Numbers attending football matches had been dropping off because many people no longer enjoyed the raucous atmosphere. It took the Hillsborough tragedy to get a total rethink of how football crowds were housed and managed.
Professor David Canter
Co-author of Football in Its Place: An Environmental Psychology of Football Grounds (May 1989), University of Huddersfield
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