Police bias, failings in Hillsborough disaster

A major investigation into the 1989 Hillsborough football stadium crush which led to the deaths of 97 Liverpool supporters concluded on Dec 2 that 12 mostly senior former police officers would have had cases to answer for gross misconduct.

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The fans, many of them young, died in an overcrowded, fenced-in enclosure at the ground in Sheffield, England, before an FA Cup semifinal against Nottingham Forest on a sunny spring afternoon. It was one of the world’s worst stadium disasters.

Police at first blamed the incident on drunken fans, an explanation that was always rejected by survivors, relatives of the victims and the wider Liverpool community who spent years fighting to find out what had happened.