PANDORA: After Hillsborough, can we ever trust the police?

File photo dated 15/04/1989 of a Liverpool fan at Hillsborough after their FA Cup semi-final football match against Nottingham Forest. The families of 96 people killed in the Hillsborough tragedy will see thousands of official documents relating to the disaster for the first time today. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Wednesday September 12, 2012. The Hillsborough Independent Panel has been overseeing the release of previously unpublished papers from around 80 organisations including the Government, police, emergency services, Sheffield City Council and the South Yorkshire coroner. See PA story INQUIRY Hillsborough. Photo credit should read: John Giles/PA Wire ENGEMN00220120913135346

Disgraceful lies were told over the tragedy which blamed the Liverpool fans for the disaster. It has taken 27 years for truth and justice to been served.

All policemen involved in the cover-up must face criminal proceedings for the lies they’ve told, regardless of whether they are working or retired.

When I was a child, my parents used to tell me, if ever I was in trouble to tell a policeman.

Sadly in 2016 that just isn’t true any more, and isn’t that sad?

I recently went to a wedding in Bodmin, Cornwall.

I sat on a table of Liverpudlians, some of who had been at Hillsborough.

They asked me what I did for a living. When I said I was a journalist, they turned away in disgust. And who could blame them?

But to be fair to the newspapers like The Sun, which has been boycotted in Liverpool for 27 years, they were only writing what the South Yorkshire Police were telling them at the time. And now we know it was all just lies, lies and damned lies.

Police failure doesn’t stop there.

What about all the terrible revelations from Rotherham, where young girls were groomed and sexually abused for years by Asians, but the police once again stood by and appeared to do nothing.

Then we had the expenditure and wasteful prosecution of journalists who were arrested at dawn and had to wait months or years to conduct the trials where the majority of journalists were found to be innocent.

Last year Jack Susianta, 17, died in a canal at Walthamstow Marshes.

The family say their son would be alive had the police not waited for four minutes before going in after him.

While officers tried to throw him a lifebuoy, none got into the water until he disappeared beneath the surface.

At the inquest Coroner May Hassell said she was “struck” by the officers’ lack of swimming ability.

If policemen are not trained to swim what are they trained for?

For nearly 50 years Tommy Brash has sold ice cream from his van on the beachfront at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea.

But now the 71-year-old has been forced from his spot on the Northumberland coast simply because an ice cream man from Poland offered the council more money for the slot. And when he opened for business, his prices were higher than Tommy’s.

Angry locals have started a petition with more than 1,700 signatures demanding that Mr Brash should be allowed to return.

Mr Brash, who has two children and five grandchildren, has been on the site for 47 years.

Whatever happened to loyalty? Whatever happened to Mr Brash’s human rights?