In the 23 years since the disaster, a succession of public bodies and authority figures have held investigations into its causes but survivors and relatives of those who died felt they had never heard the truth.
Last month's examination of 450,000 pages of previously classified documents, led by the Bishop of Liverpool, revealed for the first time the extent of the police attempts to blame football fans and hide their own failures.
On Friday the IPCC announced it would look into the doctored South Yorkshire Police statements, the smear campaign in the media and attempts to show the dead had been drunk or had criminal records.
It will also look into West Midlands Police, which approved changes to officers' accounts of the day, and a senior officer from Cumbria who may have "rushed to reach conclusions" and clear the head of South Yorkshire of wrongdoing before he retired.
These inquiries could lead to criminal charges for perverting the course of justice and perjury, even against those who have now retired, as well as misconduct hearings against a large number of officers who are still serving.
Meanwhile the DPP will review the large amount of evidence that now exists about the emergency services' chaotic response to thousands of fans being forced into overcrowded terraces at the Sheffield stadium, and the material relating to what the local council and Sheffield Wednesday knew about safety failures, to see if it would support manslaughter charges being brought.
Deborah Glass, deputy chairman of the IPCC, said: "I think I can confidently say this will be the largest independent inquiry that has been launched into the actions of the police in the United Kingdom." Because of the scale of the investigations, the IPCC is to ask the Home Office for more money.
The Attorney-General is expected to order new inquests into the deaths of the 96 victims, because of new evidence that the original ones wrongly concluded they had all died within 15 minutes of kick-off.
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