This won’t come as much of a surprise
But I am thoroughly disgusted and yet barely surprised with the verdict coming out of Preston in regard to Hillsborough and Duckenfield today.
I cannot remember the last time the courts have found against the police in anything other than a trivial matter.
Jean Charles de Menezes is shot to death after a complete fuck up of a police operation, and the Met are convicted of health and safety issues.
The police attack Ian Tomlinson during a protest - nothing happens.
And now a police officer admits to lying about the circumstances of the death of nearly 100 people - lies a coroner says make him culpable for the deaths - and yet the most we see are health and safety convictions for someone else (who isn’t even a police officer).
And don’t even get me started on the shooting of suspected terrorists. Because that will just cause so much swearing I am not sure tumblr will be able to take it.
But the public - The “Sun Readers” are just going to lap it up. There are already a stream of posts on Twitter suggesting that he was a patsy an that - despite the repeated findings of the coroners and the inquests - “the fans” were really to blame and they were the ones who caused the disaster.
History - at least for the public - is being rewritten. They are ignoring the facts and deciding the truth that the police want them to believe. The truth they were told thirty years ago by the man they want to believe is innocent.
The sad and truly tragic part is there is very little to be done. Duckenfield can’t be tried again, and most of the other people who are to blame are either dead or beyond reach.
I suppose it is the way of things, but that doesn’t mean it is right.
