That's it, you tough this one out

I think you fancy yourself as a bit of a hero, bucking against convenstional wisdom. I rather stick with facts:

In his report, Taylor concluded firmly that police mismanagement of the crowd had caused the disaster. Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, commanding his first big football match, had agreed to relieve a crush outside the ground by opening an exit gate to allow a crowd of supporters to enter together, rather than singly through the turnstiles. The central pens of the Leppings Lane terrace were full, but no officers were ordered to block the tunnel leading to those pens and direct supporters to the sides, where there was still room. "Failure to give that order," Taylor wrote, "was a blunder of the first magnitude." Taylor criticised South Yorkshire police for refusing to accept that truth. Duckenfield even said originally that supporters forced open the gate; that was condemned as a "disgraceful lie" by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith in his 1998 judicial scrutiny of new Hillsborough evidence. "It is a matter of regret," Taylor wrote, "that ... the South Yorkshire police were not prepared to concede that they were in any respect at fault. The police case was to blame the fans for being late and drunk ... It would have been more seemly and encouraging ... if responsibility had been faced."

Posted By: The Judge on October 14th 2010 at 20:03:37

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