Gladiator DVD mocks deaths of 96 innocent people. Please read

The BBQ Pit
81

It seems to me that the facts of the Hillsborough disaster, at least the basics, have been set out fairly well in this thread, not least of all by Biffer Spice, London Calling and JohnLarrigan.

It is not necessary to be British to form a valid opinion on what happened at Hillsborough, though we have been exposed to a great deal of media coverage, first of the event itself (which was broadcast live on TV before anybody knew what was happening) and then of the various inquiries culminating with the Duckenfield trial last summer. It might be difficult (maybe impossible) for a foreigner to understand the significance of Hillsborough in the British national psyche (for want of a better word), just as it is difficult for us to understand the subtle resonances of Columbine, the Oklahoma City bomb or the OJ Simpson trial for Americans. But it should not be impossible for them to understand what actually happened.

It is necessary, however, if you want to form a valid opinion on Hillsborough, at least to acquaint yourself with the facts of the case. As I said, the basics have been well set out in this thread (albeit in a piecemeal fashion) and a number of useful links have been provided.

It strikes me that the real divide in this thread is between British posters who believe that the police were largely or entirely to blame and some American posters who believe that the fans were largely or entirely to blame. Those posters who are blaming the fans have consistently displayed a total ignorance of what happened at Hillsborough, ranging from the actual events themselves to the layout of the Stadium and the behaviour of football crowds (or crowds in general since, as I have already suggested, the crowd at Hillsborough behaved no differently from the average crown in a Tube station or at a rock concert).

Some particualrly egregious examples:

Kvallulf: “Hmm, no. [The police] didn’t prevent it, but they did not cause it. Human stupidity caused it. One idiot crushed up against the other causing it … Oh, thats right, they are innocent, after all they just wanted to see the game. Its okay to crush people to death to see a FUCKING game … I really don’t care what the “Independent Taylor Report” says” (The latter statement being the closet thing in the temporal world to wilful ignorance.

dropzone: “But the people who killed those innocents were those fans who started pushing from the back … I think it would be pretty obvious to someone at the back of the crown that if the only way they could get the crowd moving was by relentlessly moving forward, there might be a bottleneck … We Yanks tend to see “official impartial” as an oxymoron.” (an “independent judiciary”, too, if recent events are anything to go by).

The Ryan: “Pushing people into pens does not kill them.” (demonstrably false, in this case)

c_goat: “It’s really quite simple, if the people in front of you stop moving, then you stop moving as well … Just because it’s part of your culture to try and force your way into the game if unrestrained means the police are responsible when it gets out of control?”

OpalCat: “some people got so stupid-crazy over a god damn sports event that they crushed almost 100 people to death … Maybe the British need to go back to kindergarten and re-learn how to stand in line nicely?” (I could explain exactly why that last remark is so objectionable, but I think most people can work it out for themselves. Hint: think “African-American” and “LA riots”)

I could go on, but you get the picture. If you do not know what happened at Hillsborough and you cannot be bothered to read up on it (or even to read what other posters in this thread have said about it) then your opinion on who was to blame has no value. People expressing worthless opinions is one thing, but in this case ignorance of the circumstances of the case and in particular of its significance for British people has led to a number of people making statements which are highly offensive.

I’m sure I will now get innundated with replies along the lines of “I have a right to my opinion”, “I’ll say what I damn well like”. All well and good. It’s a free country, and so on, but you might try asking yourself, in all sincerity, “do I know enought about this event to venture a worthwhile opinion?”. If not, you might like to think twice before mouthing off about a sensitive subject of which you know nothing.

82

All hail TomH for coherently saying what my blustering anger has prevented me from being able to coherently say in my last three posts.

pan

83

I went back and quoted myself, just to make sure that I typed what I thought I typed. Notice that I didn’t say that the blame rested entirely upon the crowd. I stated that I believed that the fans that had let pushing and shoving become **the normal and accepted behavior ** should accept some responsibility for what happened. I know that here in the US, I feel often that too many people are looking for others to blame.

“It’s not my fault my kid lit himself on fire, it’s MTV’s”

“How was I supposed to know that hot coffee was hot”

and so on and so on. I believe that every person should accept responsibility for their actions. I’m not saying that the police are completely innocent. Far from it, I think the fucked up royally. However, I also believe that if you think it’s acceptable behavior to push and shove everyone in front of you at **any ** event, then you’re in the wrong also.

Yes, I’ve been in crowds before…very large crowds…I never shoved the person in front of me, and if someone behind me pushed me, they’d get a swift elbow in their ribs.
And again, the point of the OP was that the makers of the Gladiator DVD included a documentary about violence in sports. Whether or not you think pushing people in front of you and forcing them to move forward is acceptable or not, it is still a form of violence. Everyone’s viewpoint is subjective. I’m sure that the people that sat in the Coliseum thought that the brutal murder of people for their entertainment was perfectly reasonable. Now we look back and are appalled (although some of the programs on FOX seem to be no better) Just because you feel emotional about a subject, doesn’t change the fact of what it is.

84

There is a difference between pushing somebody and pushing past somebody. If you’ve ever been in a packed club and needed to make your way to the bar or the dance floor, I’d be very surprised if you didn’t push past people. Because it’s either that or stay where you are. Football crowds were always very similar - most people had chosen their place and weren’t budging, so if you needed to get somewhere you had to push past them.

The fans at Hillsborough expected to be doing this to get to their friends. Only this time these actions that they were used to and pretty much all of us have engaged in at some point turned out to be fatal. They were fatal because of police incompetance. To blame the fans for what was normal crowd behaviour is to blame the driver killed by a car bomb for turning the key.

pan

85

Well said.

86

I hate to see us Americans making fools of ourselves. Does no one know anything about crowd dynamics? It was the responsibility of the police to secure crowd safty. From what I have read so far, the police did all they could to make sure something terrible happened.

The crowd was trying to do what they came to the stadium to do and that is see a game. The police and stadium management were responsible for the saftey of the fans and they failed miserably.

Think about this: If you are in the back of the crowd and are being allowed into the stadium, are you thinking “those poor people up front must be getting squashed.” Not if you are being allowed into the stadium. It seemed even the police, who are supposed to know that this was happening, didn’t.

The crowd is in no way to blame for pushing. This is what crowds do. This is why you have crowd control. All of you making fine distinction between pushing to kill and pushing past someone have forgotten all the experience they’ve ever had in a large crowd. The crowd moves foward, toward the goal. No one stands there and “pushes”.

It was the police and stadium official’s fault. 100%.

87

Biggirl! You speaketh the truth! Well said. In hindsight, it’s easy to see how the crowd could have prevented the tragedy, but if you don’t know anything’s wrong, you can’t be expected to suddenly all turn around and run out the stadium!! It’s up to the police to ensure the situation doesn’t get out of control, and if it does get out of control to sort the situation out, through making others aware, opening the front of the pens (which they steadfastly refused to do), and trying to rescue as many people as possible. They did none of these things. They made up stories that the press then spread that the fans had openly robbed the dead and the dying and urinated on the bodies. Cause the bereaved and survivors more suffering on top of everything else. The police failed to apologise, trying to shift the blame onto those that had been most affected by the tragedy.

88

I’m afraid I’m going to have to end my discussion with you. You are unaware of the facts necessary to apportion blame, and in the spirit of the board, and to give you the whole picture, I should persevere in making you see why your comments are hurtful, insensitive and wrong. I think I’m too close to this one, however, and am saddened by a lot of the comments I’ve read here. I’m going to back out of it all. Please check out the links that have been given in this thread if you’re at all interested in what actually happened, and read the book mentioned in the O.P. (don’t know if links are allowed, but Amazon have a good review of it. For every wild assertion you make about the fans being to blame, reputations are being dragged through the dirt. By backing the link made by the documentary, that caused the grief, you are showing how little you understand the facts of the matter. Go to the Universal Studios link given in the OP, and see the outpouring of grief. This is no small matter, and the wounds have not healed.

89

huh…so if they were all “Pushing Past” the people in front, then who was pushing the people over the railing? As I stated before, I’m in firm agreement that the police woefully neglected their duties. Perhaps it is better to state that the crown should never have been allowed to act in a manner so that a “stampead” affect became the norm.

When I see stories of people getting hurt at a concert, because of rowdy crowds of people that were all pushing towards the front, I blame the mob and the security force. I don’t say…“Well, it’s perfectly normal for everyone to push and shove forward, that’s the way we do things here”

If, as you say, nobody was pushing and actually shoving the people in front, but instead just working thier way through the crowd, then at some point; if it was that crowded, they would have reached a point where there was literally no place to move…so what did they do then?..stop and wait for the mass in front of them to move?..or simply use their body to apply forward pressure trying to force thier way closer?

90

OK,

It is pretty hard to explain “stampede effect”. What you need to understand is that a crowd eager to a game does not a stampede make.

  1. There were a lot of people outside the leppings lane end. It isnt a wide open expanse behind the stand, it is fairly narrow. Outside the turnstiles at leppings lane, people were starting to feel the pressure as more fans joined the crowd. There were fans that werent helping things, but the amount of people who ended up outside Leppings lane end could havbe been stiffled by adequate crowd control, and ticket checks. There were neither on the day of the match.

  2. while this was occuring, the match had already kicked off, and Leppings Lane was almost at capacity. Knowing that there were too many people outside Leppings lane, and knowing that there was an very near capacity crowd inside Leppings Lane, the police opened a Gate that was NEVER designed as a pedestrian enterance into the terrace, the crowd flowed through. not stampeded, not “pushed with intent to kill”. flowed.
    Once the people at the back of the crowd seen that the gate was opened, they moved as a whole towards it and through it. This is where the crowd dynamic comes into effect.
    As more people moved forward and entered the terrace, the people already at the terrace started to move forward to make space for the incoming supporters. this increaces the space available, and as such increases the momentum of the crowd dynamic.

Here is where the real problem occurs. People moved forward, the crowd behind moved forward to take their place, and the circle repeated itself. The crowd behind, knowing the game had started, were anxious th see the game and began to move faster. They had no Idea that the terrace was already full.

when you have a full terrace, it is hard to turn around and walk back out unless the crowd is walking in that direction aswell. so the people at the front were getting inadvertently crushed by the people behind.

When It became apparent that there was a very dangerous situation happening, stewarts in the grownd stalled over the opening of the gates at the front of the terrace. If this had have been done, the crisis would have been averted.

People started to climb over the fence, and into the seated area above the terrace. The gates were finally opened and people flooded onto the pitch.
remember, this all happened in the space of 15-18 minutes. 96 people died, either on the spot or afterwards due to the injuries.
This is not to put americans down or anything, but it is hard for Americans to understand the nature of a terraced crowd.

You have Huge Multi-seater stadia built on vast expanses of land. e.g. Phoenix, Giants Stadium etc.
The vast majority of English stadia were built in crowded residential areas, on the minimum amount of land that the club could afford and that could fit a stadium. The rationale was not to buy land to fit a 65,000 stadium, but to build a stadium designed to fit as many people as possible into the space provided. A dangerous philosophy indeed.
The tragedy could easily have been averted, but due to the bad planning and stupid, late actions of the authorities, 96 people died.

I hope that explains things a little better.

91

**

No one is pushing past anyone, everyone is moving forward. Everyone from the last person through the gate to about 5 rows in. The people close enough to realize what is happening are helpless. The people in front are crushed or thrown over rails by the weight of the crowd.

**

There is no “stampede” effect. No one is running wildly. The fans are not out of control. Everyone is moving foward. Slowly. There isn’t enough room to “stampede.”

BINGO!

The people behind are being pushed by the people behind them being pushed by the people behind them. The crowd in the back is moving. Perhaps, if someone smart like you were there, they could have alterted the thousands of people there of their folly.

“Stop! There is no more room!” you would cry, assuming you knew that there was no more room (how you would have come upon this peice of information from anywhere but the front of the crowd–where, I would assume, you be too busy struggling for breath to be able to cry anything)“Everyone turn around.”

And the crowd would think: Good thing Atrael is here to alert us. I’m sure I would have thought of it myself if I wasn’t a stupid moron following the police instructions!

92

Spice-

I’m sorry that you’re so close to this topic, that you can’t step back and look at it objectively. For the record, I have read all the links…pursued what I can find. That doesn’t change my opinion. You cite the Taylor report and having read it (or as much of it as I can find), I wonder exactly what the feelings of the people would have been if the report came out and said that while the police were in part to blame, the crowd mentality of the people attending such sporting events where incidents of too much crowd pressure causing injuries, were also to blame. What would your feelings have been then? I’m fairly certain that just about every one would have been screaming that the report was “Fixed” or “One - Sided”

You scream irrationalities, and cry out loudly that the blame rests solely and totally upon the police. Just as many a parent of a criminal bemoaned the fate if their children, neglecting to reckon that the behavior of those individuals brought about their own consequences.

I’m sorry…truly I am…not only for the pain you feel, but for the fact that allowing this type of behavior in a crowd of people will inevitable lead to more injuries and pain. It’s funny, that while the report, and popular opinion, cite the police to blame; the push is still on for more and more stadiums to go to seats, rather than standing. This tells me that those in charge realize that type of crowd is inherently dangerous, and are taking steps to make sure that a tragedy like this doesn’t happen again. By making sure the series of events leading up to it cannot happen. The British people seem to be a very emotional population, putting those that loose their lives upon a high pedestal, and ignoring any fault that party may have had in their own demise. Those 96 people could in no way have avoided their fate…the mass behind them certainly could have.

93

Atrael - Firstly, nobody was pushed “over the railing”. There were large metal-mesh fences at the front of the stands. People were literally crushed to death against these fences.

But to answer your question - remember that the stands were steeply banked. People lost their footing very easily. Bodies were being crushed into eachother and falling forwards - this in itself provided a certain amount of “give” to those entering from the tunnels. Human beings, as was sadly shown that day, are not perfectly hard objects. They compress. And once fans had emerged from the tunnels onto the terraces, they were no longer in a position to be able to control the results - they were already in trouble themselves, part of the crowd being crushed.

So you join at the back of a crowd. You have no idea that there is any trouble. You start to try to push your way though the crowd. By the time you realise that there is a problem it is too late - you yourself are being crushed forwards. Meanwhile there is panic towards the front. People are attempting to lift their children out of the crowd to stop them from dying. Everybody is desperately attempting to gain some breathing space (next time you use that phrase, I suggest you think of what it really means). All this time, thousands more people are still attempting to enter the stadium.

Atrael, you are thinking too much in terms of small crowds in nice flat areas. Thousands of people on a steeply banked terrace with bottleneck entries releasing ever more people in spurts just don’t work like that. I suggest you use some empathy to put yourself in the place of those going to the game. Excited, eager, jokey. Looking forward to a semi-final. Problems are the last thing on your mind. Being in a very tight crowd is not new to you - you do this every week. You know the routine like second nature: push your way as best you can through those who have settled their place on the terrace in order to get to where you want to set up camp. But suddenly everything is wrong - almost before you know it, you find yourself being crushed into the person in front of you.

Now this is the key that a lot of people seem to be missing - although you now recognise that there is no practical space for you to go into, although you have no desire to push any further, in reality there is still plenty of space for you to be crushed into the person in front of you. The ones entering from behind incredibly quickly find themselves immediately in the same problem.

At this point no member of the crowd has any control. And I don’t mean that in a nazi-following-orders, KKK going along with what everybody else is doing kind of way. I mean literally your choices have disappeared - your ability to act independently has evaporated.

Not sure I can really say much more than that. To attach blame to authorities that had allowed stadiums to reach this state is reasonable. More directly, to blame crowd control on the day for the catalogue of catastrophic decisions that were made (and listed in the Taylor Report) is entirely correct. To blame individuals in the crowd is to ascribe to them powers that on the day they simply didn’t have.

If you still disagree then I can only assume that you have never been in a really large crowd that has lost control. Especially not one on a steeply banked terrace.

pan

94

to which I can only say: bollocks. If you think that a Law Lord and an official investigative team would be naturally against the police then you are living in cloud cuckoo land. The fact that this report damned the police is one hell of an indictment, not indication of bias. If the report’s findings had been other than they were, you’re damn right we would have been screaming against it. Because it would have been wrong. Incorrect. A travesty. Fortunately, it was not wrong. Time for this strawman to keel over.

you what? We’re not blaming the police for other people’s actions here you fool, but for not doing their job. Not doing their job lead to a dangerous situation fulfilling its full tragic potential. What the hell kind of city of strawmen are you building here anyway? “parent of a criminal bemoaned the fate if their children”? Nice hyperbole, what’s the relevance? Are you now saying that the members of the crowd are criminals?

Aha! You are finally getting it. That kind of a crowd is inherently dangerous! But no blame for that danger can be ascribed to any individual element of it. It is the crowd density itself, not the individuals in it, that is to blame. The police must take the blame for allowing a crowd of that nature to form in the first place - that is the job of crowd control. Hence its name.

Ah. I do so love being patronised. And here I was thinking that we had a reputation for lack of emotion. Incidentally with that sentence you seem to be indicating that those who lost their lives bore some blame whilst…

says quite the reverse.

And so we go round the mulberry bush one more time…

pan

95

Thanks, Twisty. We in the land of wide, open spaces forget how sardine-like life in general is for you folks. It gives me chills to think of my personal space being invaded regularly like it would be were I living in a more confined area. Especially since, as a big, fat American, I take up most of the personal space I try to maintain.

96

I am not British. My emotions are not wrapped up in this event. In fact, this thread is the first I ever heard of it (we Americans are so self-centered).

I am looking at it logically. Perhaps, Atrael, you find it more comforting to believe that if the people in the crowd had been just a little bit smarter in their choices, this tragedy could have been averted.

One thing could have averted thing could have averted the tragedy. Better crowd control.

97

One thing could have averted the tragedy. I could have previewed.

98

I had type a whole long statement here, but fuck it…you’re going to belive what you believe, and I’m going to do the same.

Oh and kabbes?

I wasn’t being patronizing, if I was, trust me you’d know it. I was trying to express my point of view without any personal attacks, or falling back on the belief that anyone that would shove their way into a football game is an utter moron. I was trying to understand the situation, I didn’t agree with your position on it, but I could try to empathize with the emotions involved. If you feel that the police should have taken action, or not permitted the situation to develope as it did, fine.

99

Dropzone, I honestly can’t determine wether you should have a rolleyes or a winkey at the end of that post.

I was not implying anything in the post about americans, save only that they were better at planning large capacity stadia than the UK. Since the second Taylor report, crowd safety is rarely a worry. Authorities have really gotten their act together.

100

this football365 report shows they have cut the scenes from the documentary for all future copies made of the DVD.