Hillsborough disaster exonerating the Liverpool fans, MacKenzie issued the following statement: In response, Trevor Hicks, chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, rejected MacKenzie's apology as "too little, too late", calling him "lowlife, clever lowlife, but lowlife". A press conference held by families of the victims also banned all "Sun" reporters from entering, with a sign on the door reading "NO ENTRY TO SUN JOURNALISTS". Sales of "The Sun" remain poor in Merseyside and a boycott is still practised. In 2004, its average circulation in Liverpool was 12,000 copies a day. Following the April 2016 verdict of unlawful killing, "The Sun" and
South Yorkshire Police 2012 for their dishonesty and negligence in their handling of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, which led to an apology from the then Chief Constable David Crompton. The Hillsborough Independent Panel had exposed the way in which the force had attempted to divert blame from their own mishandling of the tragedy by feeding false information to the media and altering statements given by their own officers. In June 2013, UK newspaper "The Guardian" reported on emails sent by Crompton in which he had suggested that the families of fans killed at the Hillsborough disaster had been untruthful. In one, Crompton