Legacy and Future Legislation

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It's pretty much all he talks about In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply, see capital onene dot com slash bank guuy, capital One NA member FDIC. All cat parents understand the feeling of being totally ignored by your cat. and often thinking, does my cat even love me? There's only one solution to solve that, Shiba. feeedure cat Shiba and go from feeling ignored to truly adored in twelve days guaranteed or your money back Shiba has a menu of products, appetizers, entrees, treats and even a kittenens menu. So Shiba has a product for even the pickiest eater, like Shiba puree made with bone broth, a smooth and creamy texture that cats love. or Shiba grilled, protein rich formula made with real chicken and seafood. To learn more, check out Shiba. com Welcome to Stuff You should Know, a production of IiHart Radio Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck And it's just us and that's okay. and this is our ongoing studies abroad ition. That's right. And we, you know, this is about the Hillsboro disaster, which was the very unfortunate and super sad and somewhat infuriating deadly crush that happened at an English football stadium in nineteen eighty nine. So we enlisted Kyle are one writer from the UK to put this together for us and he did a great job and used all the appropriate letters and terminology and his spelling and stuff, you know? Yeah, I was going to say no Z's throughout. They were all S's. Yeah U yeah, he did a wonderful job with this summarizing like a really big Giant story that had we done this episode like when we first started, it would have been totally different. Because around twenty fifteen Yeah the public opinion, the entire basically worldview of what happened at the strategedy completely flip flopped And the truth finally came out U we'll get to all that, but let's I'd say we kind of give everybody some background about what's going on here. The whole thing took place. Like you said, in nineteen eighty nine at Hillsborough Stadium That's in Sheffield, which is in South Yorkshire, which is a county in Yorkshire and normally this is the home of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. That's where they play at Hillsboro. But this day it was actually hosting a FA Cup semifinal. That means it was all England teams and it was between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. So far so good. This is just a normal semif final It's a big deal, way bigger than the average Sheffield Wednesday football cllub game You know, so far, it's pretty normal For sure. They had Liverpool had more fans and I'm not sure how it is now, but nineteen eighty nine, at least that was the case. I think it probably still is. but they were allocated the smaller end of the stadium And the entrance And you know, as you'll A lot of times with disasters like these, you're going to see like a series of steps that happen to kind of ensure unwittingly that something terrible goes down. And this was sort of the first one was they allocated The larger fan base, the smaller end of the stadium and the entrance to that was at the end of Lepping's Lane which was a street that dead ended into the stadium and not only did it dead in, but bottleneck it got more narrow as you got toward that dead end. So and that the turnstiles there, which is where you get in. Um that part of the stadium, there were seven of them. they were old. you know, this is an older stadium and they didn't, you know, they just couldn't move people through as quickly as like you would be able to today Exactly. And you know, under a normal game for Sheffield Wednesday, this is not that big of a problem. This was a very big problem this day because there were ten thousand one hundred fans who were just the ones who had standing room only tickets Yeah in what are called pens, right? So they're ultimately like basically little terraces with a bunch of little tiny steps on them and some railings which are called crush barriers. And you just stand in them, you just pack everybody in, but they're supposed to say like, okay, there' no more than this many people can go into this pen, no more than this many people can go into that pen, whatever So there's ten thousand people who are all going into these pens. They have to use these seven turnstles. And so very quickly, even outside of the stadium, a bit of a crush starts to happen in part because the cops aren't doing anything about having people form a line or queue They're not directing anybody to do anything. It's just get in where you fit in and whoever gets there first is the one who gets through that turnstyle that moment. Yeah, but you know, there's plenty of surveillance footage and stuff out and It was not, you know, as we'll see, the the story that was kind of cooked up to evade, um I guess being responsible for this, which is what they were, was that, you know, it was an unruly crowd of drunks. Hooliganism was a thing much more back then They've basically eradicated that now for the most part. And if you look at the footage, it's, you know It's a bunch of kids a A lot of teenagers. It wasn't super expensive back then to get into Um soccer and football games like this. It was six pounds to get in for standing room only. And they were lively. They were having a good time But it didn't look like anything threatening at that point at all. There were people just like, you know, kind of trying to get into the stadium to see a game they were excited about Yeah. and all this really kind of starts about ten minutes before kickoff. That's when people are like, comeome on, let's go. We got to get in and like by this time that crowd had back like the lines or whatever had backed up into Leppings lane pretty far. So people wanted to hurry up and get through, right? But like you said, everybody was generally good natured kickoff was set at three PM and at ten till three PM, there were still five thousand Liverpool fans who are outside on Leppings Lane trying to get through these seven turnstyles And so this point, the cops At least one cop, the guy who is in charge of managing this side of the outside of the stadium. gotot in touch with the guy who was running all of the police for this soccer match. His name is David Duckinfield And the guy outside said, Hey, we need to open a gate and forget the turnstilles and tickets. There's a bunch of people who are about to get crushed out here and we need to relieve some of this pressure. Please open this gate. you did that once Duck andfield ignored it. did it twice, Duck andfield ignored it. The third time it was almost frantic And Duckenfield finally said, Okaykay, go ahead and open gate C They did that at two hundred fifty two PM and all of a sudden just an enormous mass of people stream into essentially the foyer of the stadium. So now you go from a crowd crush outside the stadium to a potential crowd crush just inside the stadium Yeah. and so and we'll get to more about David Duckenfield, the match commander and his qualifications and stuff, I guess in a minute. But one thing we did not mention is pens and this was partially to to kind of, um, Hoologanism down. They were They were fenced within the seating area. So once you got to this large standing area. there were different numbered pins within that that were you know, fenced off from each other. So they were literal pinens. And when people started flowing through when they opened Gate C They were all passing through toward this, you know, the central part of the field down this long tunnel. I think Cal said was twenty three meters long to get to pins three and four, which were basically midfield And there was plenty of room on the pins on the outside because nobody was directing traffic, noody was relaying information. no one knew this and those central pins were already full at ten til when that big crowd of people started to make their way to that spot So again, because it was standing room only, you didn't it didn't tell you what pen you had to go to. you could go to whatever pen. but since that tunnel was straight ahead That's where people naturally went. And like you said, those pens were already full. So as this tunnel this crush of people, there's crowd of people after opening Gate sea floods in connects with the people who are already coming through the seven turnstyles, almost all of them start to go through this tunnel and that tunnel opens up on two pens that are already full of people, way overcaacity already As they found in retrospect, there was about a thousand more people that they allowed on to each pen than they should have based on the kind of crowd control safety stuff they had in place So it was already dangerously full before those people from Gate Cea even made their way down the tunnel. But when they did, they encountered this mass of other people But there were people behind them who didn't know this at the back of the tunnel in the tunnel, and they all wanted in too. So everybody was pressing forward and then all of a sudden a crowd crush in those two middle pens. That's right So it's about five til kickoff at this point when people like later described just sort of a change in how things were going You know, like I said, it was it was people generally happy to go see the soccer game. And by two hundred fifty five, it becomes clear that like something's wrong U four minutes later. It was a lethal crush had developed in those two central pens and officers Some of them are telling people to move back. like this is part of the problem is the officers themselves are very disorganized and sharing information. So some officers are telling people to move back. They're saying they can't move back because there's people behind them And uh those fences that were installed to I think that was in nineteen seventy seven to prevent the hooliganism were keeping people like once they got in from being like, oh, wow, it's getting like super crowded. Let's move to these outer pins where there's plenty of room. R. People started climbing fences and stuff U And this is where it gets really, really out of hand. like the panic starts to set in People are trying to drag people over the fences to safety. Some of the gates of the pens were opened by the cops at that point, but it develops into like a real dangerous mess Right. And so inside the pens, there's those railings that they're kind of like intermittently staggered. Um in the pens, right? So if you walk into one of these pens and you're facing the field, you'll eventually come to a railing and that's a crowd barrier or crush barrier, which means that if a crush develops that barrier is supposed to stop it from going any further than the barrier. So the people behind the barrier, life's going to suck for them, but the people in front of that barrier will be safe, right? It's like limiting crowd crushes The problem is is one of them was very, very old, at least one And it gave So there's a whole crush of people who are pressed up against this and a whole bunch of people on the other side of it too. And now one of those barriers fall and that crush of people just basically spills into this other group of people in the same pen and people it just fell over. It was like a wave of people that overcame the people who were standing on the other side of that barrier that broke Yeah, it's a All this time, the match starts on time. Word is not, again, communication was just kind of chaotic and no one got word down to the pitch that Hey, maybe we should delay this game and get this under control And at three PM, the game starts at three o five. those barriers at least the one in PIin three had given away and a human cascade starts and this is when you know, the devastating st. We're not going to read a thousand accounts of people getting, you know squeeze to death because it's pretty awful Uh you know what happens in a situation like that is canan't breathe because you're so packed into one another, that you can't expand your chest out to get a breath and you generally dive asphyxiation or like your heart stops U Yeah, and this happened to a lot of people in this. We talked a lot about this phenomenon in the crowd episode Um, and I think in the Black Friday episode too, Yeah, the proud one was what inspired this episode Yeah, because we talk just we just touched on it just a little bit, right I don't even know if I mean, I think if we mention it, I said I brought it up because I had asked Kyle to write this. Gotcha, gototcha. okay When there was like when this crowd, this human cascade happened, people got pushed over and you know there's a natural human reaction to try to get upright again, which means that you were standing on people beneath you. And so people got trampled in addition to the people who were pressed up against the other crush barriers or against the fence There's some really disturbing photos that were taken very close up of the people Pressed up against the fence. didid you see those saw them when I was in high school in sports Illustrated, like I remember this vividly. I didn't go back and revisit a lot of that because it's super upseting. Yeah, it really is upseting. And there's a guy who took a lot of these. hisis name was David Cannon and he was u at least partially responsible for getting the police to finally stop the game The reason why they wanted to stop the game so bad is because they think that that Oh that crush or that movement that caused the human cascade was in response to one of Liverpool's players just missing a goal U And so they're like, we need to stop the game, right? So this guy David Cannon got them to stop the gamer, at least he tried. He's one of the main photographers who was there at the time. So his pictures are Like you said, they're very it's very disturbing to see this because you can hear people describe it, you can read descriptions of it. But when you see peopleople pressed up against the fence like they were, it really comes home how horrific this was. likeike you can kind of finally start to imagine yourself in that position Yeah, it's u It's pretty bad. That's why I didn't go back and look at three hundred six, it was a superintendent who actually got the game stopped. He went down to the pitch and actually went to the referee They had a couple of minutes before signaled to the police control box to stop but it kept on for two more minutes. so that's when the superintendent finally like literally went on the field and told the referee like, you got to stop this game. This isn't because you know, everyone thought it was just like rowdy fans And he was like, no, this is not what's happening. The match commander Duckenfield Ah requested more cOs to come. It was called operations supportpp And no one was explaining why or what's going on though. So once the officers and you know, communications are are not what they are now, certainly. It's not an excuse they were not getting briefed on exactly what was going on. So a lot of the cops there assumed The fans were just rowdy and were trying to like storm the fence. storm the field And they formed a cordon on the pitch to kind of keep that from happening And again, there some of them are opening gates like they see what's going on and some are trying to help the fans, but other cops are either ignoring them or like shoving people back in. Right? or standing there facing this crowd crush in a line according with other cops. So imagine that. like just how surreal that would look Um, because they didn't understand what was going on So eventually they managed to open some gates which allowed the u the crowd crush to ease up and So the crowd crush was bad enough like the after effffects, like immediate after effects were it just continued to go badly. The police response the the emergency response was just so uncoordinated that it surely, I think they proved it cost the lives of scores of people. I think in the end ninety five people died Sven hundred were injured Two more people died years later. So really ninety seven people died from this crowd crush. thirty seven people were teenagers twenty seven were parents. There was one ten year old that died He was, um very Ironically, I guess, and sadly, the cousin of Stephen Gerard, who has became a big star for England in their soccer team, but I think the oldest, I think that was the youngest at ten and the oldest was a sixty seven year old whose brother was playing for Liverpool. And it's yeah, again, you know, to read through like each account is a little too depressing for this show. but You did mention the two that died years later. I think Tony Blland died four years after in nineteen ninety three, he had brain damage up into that point and then What they count is the ninety seventh victim didn't pass away until twenty twenty one But they said it was due to, you know, these life changing injuries that he suffered from this. Yeah, I think also brain damage as well. Andrew Devine So There there were u There was like an immediate response to this, right? desespite What we'll see Liverpool just taking all of the blame for this. Liverpool fans There was like a public response. One of the things was Paul McCartney jumped in because this is a Liverpool team. And He's from Liverpool. I don't know if you knew they' not Chuck. But he he he I guess released a charity single cover of Fairy Cross the Mercy Have you heard that song? It's a good song Uh I didn't think it was that great, but I think it was a great act Did you listen to the I didn't listen to the eighty nine one that they released for as a charity single. Did you listen to the original? because that's very good Now I listen to the pertain to the show At any rate, it's a good song originally. and it was like you said, a very cool act. They were also like you can also see photos of just the the whole entire soccer pitch covered with flowers just as in meemorium Um, it was just there was a big there was a good public response. But ultimately, public opinion was much more venomous. I guess that's probably a good time for a break and we'll come back and talk about that venom. Ready for this It's America's two hundred and fiftieth, but you deserve some presents too. Simon Malls, mills and premium outlets have can't miss sales july third to fifth. Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free and get two point five times the points in addition to extra savings, cashback and offers that also work at shopsimon. comot Grab the f, head to a Simon center and make it a day for the books. It's a celebration thing. Sign up today at Simonplus dot comot Rewards program terms apply. seeee Simonplus dot com for details. This is Janna Kramer from Wind Down with Janna Kramer. Hey, quick question for the parents listening right now, when's the last time your kid asked for something and you actually felt good saying yes Because lately a lot of families have been hearing the same thing. Can I have Lingo kids, please? 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Everything kids love Organic Valley Protein plus ultra filtered milk is pasted raised from cows that might take more steps than most people That's a plus And it has fifty percent more protein and fifty percent less sugar than regular milk That's a big plus And the fact that I didn't make a pot about moving Also a plus Organic Valley protein plus ultra filtered milk Protein plus pasture raised Learn more at organicvalley. com All right, so right after this, the police basically immediately started trying to engage and successfully, as we'll see for a while, engaged in a cover upp they wanted to, you know, not be on the hook for this And the hooliganism that I talked about had been blamed Um We had done an epode Hoolanism, but I think we ever did, did we No, surely we talked about in our soccer episode, but I don't think we ever did one just on that. Yeah, it was on the list for a while, but maybe we should wait in case things change again Okay. but that was the the narrative that was fed the public basically, that match commander And I guess we should go ahead and talk about David Duckenfield a little bit. He's the one that first started saying it was That gate was forced open by Liverpool fans like he denied even opening that gate. This guy was not qualified for this job Um, I think previous commanders had u had didid things like go down before the game like hours before, cheheck things out, walk around, identify points or potential hazards because this had happened a couple of times before one time in this very stadium. I think in nineteen eighty one Um, And so it was it was top of mind or should have been And he did not do that. He never like actually inspected the grounds beforehand and kind of went missing from about noon to two o'clock on the day and never accounted for his whereabouts Yeah, he had never commanded a match at the stadium, let alone a semifinal match Just even a regular match. he'd never commanded it. so he had no idea what he was doing He was also a very arrogant person, so he felt like he He could just do it naturally. He didn't need to familiarize himself and he had Served. as a rank and file patrolman or PC Um, like ten years before. that was the last time he'd worked a match and he was definitely not in charge of it. So he was very much out of his league And like It took him decades to finally acknowledge that Inead, he helped lead this police cover up that shifted all the blame unfairly and untruthfully toward the fans for Liverpool and off of the cops who were really responsible for the tragedy Yeah, for sure. So we'll get to kind of what happened in a timeline sense as this goes on in a minute. But initially the police watchdog recommended that there was like a disciplinary case would be brought against Duckenfield that did not happen at the time and he was medically retired two years later on full pension basically to evade these like discipline from this incident U the case again that the cops built was that peopleeople were drunk. They got there late. It was the Liverpool fans A lot of them didn't even have tickets and they were trying to just force their way in. And over the years, they found out that they had gone back in even This is how despicable it gets. Not only did they cook up this narrative But they went back in and The books and altered witness statements and removed comments about that were unfavorable to the police and how things were handled and they like torched it basically. Yeah, and the force was very reggimented I saw, right? So there wasn't there wasn't going to be any dissent. There wasn't going to be any secret tip offs to the press about what really happened by any of the police constables, you know, under these guys charge, right? So the top saying this is what happened. That's what everybody on the police force was going to say what happened. And so that's what the media heard And um the the British tabloids typically have like a fairly bad reputation And they really showed up for it for this one. The whole idea that the soccer fans, especially the Liverpool fans in particular were responsible for this they just beat that drum incessantly. They called the fans and by extension, the victims beasts Yobs, which means thugs Vile And then the son printed a front page article called The Truth. I think within a day or two After this that really drove this home. like just how picable the tabloids could get about this stuff Yeah, they said things like there were fans that were urinating on cops u that they were um looting the dead. at the time and This was not the case and the sn ended up apologizing in twenty twelve and has been boycotted in Liverpool ever since. I still don't think they sell the sun there E after the apologies. U this was, you know, this was the nineteen eighties and things were different back then. the hooliganism was uh, you know, much more prominent So it was a narrative which was easy for people to believe in England and when they were reading it, they, you know, people were like, Yeah, this is the typical sort of Um antis social underclass is how Kyle put it They're trying to get in without tickets. u, you know, drunk at three in the afternoon U it was it was a different kind of u It was a different sport back then in a lot of ways as far as, you know, as we'll see, the kind of money that poured into the sport in the nineteen nineties after this C certainly with the start of the Premier League in nineteen ninety two and ticket prices rising and stadiums modernizing and just big money and big business. It just it was a lot more just kind of small time and old school and quaint back then. and so people were ready to except this this narrative, you know, kind of as it was being fed to them Yeah, Britain has a classist streak running through it and this certainly fit that idea, that supposition that lower classes were drunk and violent and of course they they were responsible for this, right Um But so the public accepted this. The Thatcher government obviously was totally down with this idea And that's just how it went. likeike that was it as far as everybody was concerned, thanks to the police reports, thanks to the government stance thans to what the media is saying What happened was a bunch of drunk Liverpool fans who didn't have tickets stormed the gate and ninety seven people ended up dying as a result shame on Liverpool and its fans. That was the the public opinion on this for years Thats right. So in nineteen ninety, we get our first independent report. It was called the Taylor Report for Lord Justice Taylor And uh they I mean this is kind of right after and they did come out blaming the police failure to control the crowd first off and Duckenfield specifically for failing to close this tunnel. Like if they would have closed that tunnel and it would have fed people to the empty pins and that could have that probably would have avoided this whole thing despite like having way too many people down there If they would have been fed to those emptyer pins, this probably wouldn't have happened. Sure. And he made, you know, safety recommendations in the final report, but very key didnn't have anything in there about like Like, hey, these people were all just victims and they had no part in sort of making this happen. didn't that didn't come along until much later For sure. that closing that tunnel two or his failure to close the tunnel two is even worse than it seems because that was actually such a u a widely used technique for police superintendents who were in charge of overseeing matches over the years that one of them had his name on it. It was called the Freeman tactic. and it was as simple as closing that middle tunnel and opening the entrances to the less U the less full pens And so that just shows you how little of a grasp Duckenfield had on the concept of safety at at a football match that he was responsible for overseeing. He He didn't even know about the Freeman tactic if you ask me And like rank and file cops who worked matches before knew about the Freeman tactic It was like that was a huge deal. in addition to all the people dying as a result, that the fact that like everyone knew that you should do that and Duck andfld didn't is a big deal For sure. And a year later after the Taylor independent report, the Taylor report u these inquests are coming back with verdicts. accidental death is basically what they all were, you know decided upon And it was very controversial. Obviously the victims' families are and they're the ones you know, who kept this alive all these years until they, you know, finally got some measure of accountability, I guess The coroner ruled out evidence relating to deaths anything after three PM. he ruled out evidence because he said everybody was either dead or brain dead by three hundred fifteen. And there were there was like actual proof that would come out later that some people survived until four PM and a lot of people would have survived for that forty five minutes had they gotten emergency services in there in an orderly manner Right. Yeah, Th those are the people I was talking about earlier. So that coroner essentially was just basically going along with the sentiment, the public sentiment that these people surely, it wasn't the police who were responsible, right? Yeah In addition though to being disorganized, they were also like reallyally cruel to the families. and this stuff came out in these reports including the HIip report in the trials that If you were a victim family member, you were sent to a gym, a nearby gym that had been turned into a morgue And the first thing that you encountered was standing out waiting outside in the cold before they led you in and handed you a stack of pololaroids of the victims dead bodies, right I mean, they had to look through those to identify their own. It was it was pretty brutal. But it wasn't even like, are you looking for a child? Are you looking for a man? and they were sorted. It was like, here's the stack of pololaroids. Look through them until you find your loved one. the parents of the children who died They weren't allowed to hold or kiss them. ' they were told that they were property of the coroner And the coronner himself seems to have been on the cover up to some degree tangentially because he ordered that all of the deceased including the children haveave their blood drawn to be tested for alcohol content to support this police narrative Well, what turned out What he did inadvertently was show that alcohol was not a factor in this really. Like there were Very few drunk people and the ones that were drunk weren't all that drunk I mean, in a weird way, it's good that he did that, you know? Yeah So like you said, the families of the victims organized and tried to keep this thing alive and, you know keep the public from solidifying their opinion about what had happened and they managed to get a private prosecution I guess laid or charged against the police for the for the incident didn't know you could do that. apparently you can still in the UK, America, some other places private group of people can get a court to prosecute people. and that's what they did found that Duckenfield They couldn't reach a verdict on him. whether he was criminally responsible or not. One of his deputies was acquitted. And the judge in this case said, that's it. Duck and Field will never face another a retrial. Like this is it. He's not responsible, even though we failed to reach a verdict, which is a weird thing to do. But that happened in two thousand Yeah. charges against Sheffield, the actual football club that wasn't even playing that day, but he had played in that stadium, Sheffield Wednesday and the Sheffield City Council and The safety engineers, the Eastwoods were ruled out and this was, I think ten years earlier. So they were already off the hook So that was all in two thousand twelve years later in twenty twelve There was another report that the HIP report, the Hillsboro Independent panel And that brought about some new inquests more sort of digging into this thing about like what happened with the police. And this is the one that really started to kind of turn the tide as far as the public goes And one of the reasons it happened was because MP Andy Burnham was at a twenty year memorial service and was just lambasted by the crowd. peopleeople chanting justice for the ninety six Um really had a hard time at that event. So he's the one that was like, let's open this back up. four hundred fifty thousand pages of information. and this is when they they really kind of started to make things right Yeah that panel apparently kept like releasing information piecemal and the press just kept reporting on it and very quickly the public was like, o, wait, we've been wrong. It wasn't these drunken Liverpool fans They were mistreated. The families of the victims were mistreated, sururvivors were mistreated. It was actually these cops and the cops had lied. to essentially cover up their responsibility. Like the public opinion just completely shifted And so that the hip report led to new inquests And the inquests found that the ninety six victims and later on the ninety seventh victim were all unlawfully killed So it wasn't accidental anymore, like the first inquest found. They were unlawfully killed, which meant someone is criminally accountable for their deaths, right And this inquest said Go figure it out. likeike this is this is our we're saying, we're recommending that somebody is responsible for this. Yeah, it also found that forty one, I was looking for the number earlier, but forty one of the ninety six who died They said, quote had potential to survive if the you know, rescue had have been a little more organized. because I don't think we said the first ambulance arrived on the scene at three hundred and sixteen. And even when the ambulances had been called they didn't know the severity of the situation because they, I think one cop called for like a big, you know, mass of ambulances to come and but it wasn't describbe what was happening. So they refused that initial the medical services refused that initial like huge rush of ambulances and just sent like some they also didn't set up patriage on the field, like, you know, we'll get to that in a little more detail, but But forty one of the ninety six would have survived, they determined, which is just brutal number. Yeah In twenty nineteen, after all this stuff had come out, public opinion changed, Um Duck andhil was dragged by into court Remember that one judge had been like, he can't face a retrial. Well, they were like, well, circumstances have changed enough now that he's definitely going to be tried again. And he was found not guilty of gross negligence manslaughter. And then they also heard evidence about the altering of the police reports to make it favorable for the cops and make it unfavorable for the Liverpool fans. And those guys got off too. So now we have a place where The inquest, the government inquest is saying these people are unlawfully killed so someone's criminally responsible. and the courts are saying People who are responsible are not criminally responsible So nobody is liable anymore. Nobody's responsible officially U and then the final well who knows it's the final report because they seem to still be happening, but last year twenty twenty five Um An independent Office for Police Conduct repeport came out and uh basically reiterated that nobody was going to be held like actually held responsible Um you know, they they It wasn't as cold hearted as it sounds. They were basically saying like, hey, this is thirty six years later All twelve of these officers are either have either passed on or have long since retired And I got the sense it was like, can we Can we put this all behind us now and not throw these old cops in jail Essentially, but yeah, I think the families were like, well, they're still responsible even though they're old and the reason that they got old is because you took fourteen years to conduct this investigation. Yeah, for sure. Let's take a break, Chuck and we'll come back and finish up, huh Yeah, let's do It's America's two hundred and fiftieth, but you deserve some presents too. Simon malls, mills, and premium outlets have can't miss sales july third to fifth. Join Simon Plus, our new rewards program for free and get two point five times the points in addition to extra savings, cashback, and offers that also work at shopsimon. comot Grab the f, head to a Simon center and make it a day for the books. 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That's a plus And it has fifty percent more protein and fifty percent less sugar than regular milk That's a big plus And the fact that I didn't make a pun about moving Also a plus Organic Valley protein plus ultrafilterered milk Protein plus pasture raised Learn more at organicvalley. com Okay, Chuck, so not just the HIP report, but a bunch of different reports basically showed quite clearly that the police response and the emergency response was just terrible. And you talked a lot about what the I guess the cluster with the ambulances, but the police as well, were essentially disorganized, about as disorganized as a group of police can be. And the reason why is because again, David Duckenfield was just out of his depth through and through, even though he was commanding the match. And I said that he was a rather arrogant type And he was U twenty fifteen for the first time in decades, twenty, twenty five plus years As these reports started coming out and public opinion changed, when he was tried eventually, he admitted After seven days of intense grilling on the stand, he finally basically broke down and admitted like, yes, he was responsible for the death of those ninety six people because the ninety seventh hadn't died yet and that he froze under pressure. This is a complete reversal of what he'd been saying the whole time, Chuck, like. He'd been saying it was the Liverpool fans. they were drunk. they were drunk. These guys have been saying it for decades. now All all of a sudden the guy in charge says no. I failed and people died because I was not qualified to command that match Yeah,, you know You hear something like that is a family member of a victim and it's I don' I don't know how that feels actually. I don't know if that would provide some solace to finally hear the truth. Yeah. orr if it just like re angers you all over again after all these years. Probably both I'm sure there's a lot of mixed emotion about it At the very least, that finally happened. I mean, there is something about somebody finally admitting something Like and not just continuing to gaslight the world and the victims themselves. So I guess that is something. It really changed stadium safety and security after this The Taylor report, they basically said, hey, no more of these standing room only things You have to have seats for everybody that's in there. I think it was um, All the clubs in the top two divisions in nineteen ninety four had to move to that. And then they established the ground spports ground safety authority. after that to, you know, to oversee like all of these football stadiums over there This was a major turning point, not just in safety at football matches, but in the game of football itself because this happened to coincide with England making it into the semifinals in the World Cup in nineteen ninety And you know, a lot of people who had been former football fans were now caught up in the spirit again. So that brought a lot of people back to being fans of pro football. Those upgrades that The clubs and the stadiums were required to undertake meant that they needed to up ticket prices. Yeah, higher ticket prices, like you said, kind of change the social strata of fans. It just it got more expensive. It got more business like. Soccer changed almost directly as a result of the Hillsboro tragedy Yeah, and that, you know, when the Premier League came on in ninety two, like that was That was a real game changer. like the amount of money that is is spent in the Premier League on players on the teams on I think there's the And I'll probably get some this wrong because I't follow the Premier League but Friends do, all of them almost And they were talking about the, you know, you get relegated. Um if you don't I guess when or I guess if you're in the bottom of whatever category and you don't make that you don't win that game. to stay in the Premier League you get relegated down to the lower leeague And so that game to see who gets relegated and who doesn't is called the most expensive game in sports or something like that. just because of like all the money that comes with that you miss out on with being relegated or that comes with staying in the Premier League. Yeah, these guys get paid like thousands and thousands of pounds a year to play. some of them way more than that even The first joke of the episode Let's talk about Ker Starmer because he is under fire right now. thoseose that family or the organization of victims families. They haven't gone away. They organized and they're still very vocal. And one of the things that they have been doing is putting pressure on Keer Starmer and his labor government because he made a direct promise that he would see through the Hillsboro law Um, which would It was pretty important legislation or it would be if they get it passed through Yeah. I think the whole point that seems to be of the Hillsboro law be to enforce And it's weird they have a lot to do this, but to enforce truth when cops are dealing with something like this and basically like almost like a whistleblower thing, likeike, hey,, you can come out and tell the truth. like you don't like you're obliged to tell the truth. right. You don't have to go along with with this narrative that gets passed down and that that loyalty that you were kind of talking about earlier on m I don't I I didn't like really dig into the law. I don't know if there like protections or anything involved But that law was is hasn't been passed yet, which is really frustrating. Right.