Police Blamed in Deaths of 95 at British Soccer Game

A “failure of police control” led to the deaths of 95 soccer fans in Britain’s worst sports disaster, a government report said today.

The 71-page report said authorities at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, failed to recognize how big their job would be or how to cope with problems when they developed during the opening minutes of an FA Cup semifinal April 15.

Shortly after the report was released, the top police officer for the Sheffield area, South Yorkshire Chief Constable Peter Wright, submitted his resignation, and David Duckenfield, who was in charge of the police at Hillsborough, was suspended pending a further review.

‘Accepted Full Responsibility’

“I accepted full responsibility for police action in this event,” Wright said.

Drinking by “an unruly minority” of fans and “confused and inadequate” signs and tickets issued by the clubs aggravated the problem, the report said. But it placed the primary blame squarely on top police officials.

“Neither their handling of problems on the day nor their account of it in evidence showed the qualities of leadership expected of their rank,” the report said. “The main reason for the disaster was the failure of police control.”

To try to avoid a recurrence of the tragedy, the report recommended a 15% reduction in standing room at English soccer stadiums and better safety procedures at the perimeter fences installed to keep rowdy fans off the fields. Those fences turned into death traps at Hillsborough.

The report was sent for review to Britain’s Home Office, where Secretary Douglas Hurd said officials had failed to learn from previous stadium problems, including the Heysel riots in Brussels and the Bradford City fire that killed more than 50 people.

“The tragedy would not have occurred if lessons learned in the past had been properly applied,” Hurd said. “It is for everyone concerned to ensure they are applied in the future.”