Officer Smith Testimony

The first testimony I analyzed was Officer Smith’s. He was assigned to patrol the outside perimeter of the stadium where the turnstiles for the Liverpool fans was located. He stated that his familiarity with the grounds were limited both in and outside the stadium. Also, that communication was poor that day because not everyone had a radio. This was mentioned in the documentary we watched in class. Once it got close to kickoff lots of fans were waiting to get through the gate, mostly younger people who had been drinking. He mentioned that they were pushing and not cooperating with police orders to back up. This is in when deaths started to occurred. Smith explained the events of that day in a dumbfounded tone. He was honest, laughing at times too, appearing to feel like a fool thinking he was prepared for his job that day. He never seemed to blame the fans or police for the incident, more as if a combination of things contributed to the tragedy. He told the story how he saw it not with a bias in mind. The changes to this testimony removed parts like the police’s lack of familiarity for the area, shortage of radio communication and confusion with how to react. Leaving these things out made the Liverpool fans look like they caused of this tragedy. Similar to the BBC documentary that said the Police sanitized their
His job that day was to take his post at the perimeter track. His biggest objective was to make sure no one was allowed on the perimeter track. Officer Groome gave a lot of criticism during his testimony to the policing that happened that day at Hillsborough. He said that policing there had become complacent due to a long period of time without any issues there. He brought up how manpower in the police force had been cut from years past. If 80 more officers were available, Groome believed the tragedy that occurred at Lepping Lane could have been preventable in some way. He also criticized the control