Quote: isaac1 "Watch the documentary that was aired earlier this week week on itv player, or read the report. both say that there was significant crowding and crushing in the area around the leppings lane turnstiles outside the ground and the gate was opened by the police to try and releive this. many LFC fans who were there also stated that they feared for their safety outside the ground.
the crushing outside the ground is seen now as fact!'"
Indeed it is. Nobody is arguing that the police didn't have a problem they had to deal with, they certainly did.
Quote: isaac1 "As they approached the stadium there was no filtering of the crowd and the bottleneck at the concourse in front of the turnstiles became tightly packed.
...
many more fans arrived, oblivious to the mounting crush at the front, and the situation in the vicinity of the turnstiles soon became critical.
1.78 As kick-off time approached, the crush worsened, and men, women, children and police officers struggled to breathe. Mounted police officers were trapped in the crowd. In later testimonies police officers stated that the crowd grew ‘unruly’, ‘nasty’ and ‘violent’, but people caught in the crush gave a contrasting account. They felt there had been no attempt
to manage the crowd, no filtering and no queuing.
1.79 The Police Control Box, the centre of the policing operation at the stadium, was positioned inside the ground, elevated above the Leppings Lane terrace, giving a commanding view of the pens below. At 2.30pm the bank of CCTV monitors in the box showed the build-up of fans in Leppings Lane and at the turnstiles.
1.80 As the crush became critical, C/Supt Duckenfield faced a serious dilemma. The senior officer outside the ground, Superintendent Roger Marshall, radioed that unless the large exit gates were opened to relieve the crush there would be serious injuries, possibly deaths.
Hesitating, C/Supt Duckenfield gave the command to open the gates.
1.81 Gate C was adjacent to the turnstiles and once opened the crowd walked through into the inner concourse behind the Leppings Lane terrace and the North Stand. Fans recalled ‘hanging back’ to wait for the congestion to ease. When Gate C opened they walked onto the inner concourse and down the tunnel.'"
The crush was a consequence of the police, unlike in previous fixtures, making no effort at all at crowd control on the approach to the Leppings Lane End, and so you ended up with a rapidly increasing mass and it was that which put pressure on the fans nearest the front.
Opening the gates would have been an entirely reasonable response if the fans had somewhere to go. And if the police had first closed the gates to the central pens, which were already full, there would have been no death. The fans would have gone left or right and found their way into the relatively empty side pens.
The tragedy occurred because the fans were directed down a steep tunnel where they naturally assumed they were supposed to go. And had its root in the absence of any filtering, or queuing or other crowd control arrangements outside the Leppings Lane End, despite known previous serious issues.