Do not expect us to release every suspect's ethnicity, say police
The driver of a car that ploughed into crowds during Liverpool football club's victory parade was described as 'white British' hours after being arrested on Monday.
In the wake of the Southport killings in 2024, Merseyside Police was heavily criticised for allowing a void of information about the perpetrator, Axel Rudakubana, which was filled with misinformation, including that he was a Muslim asylum seeker.
Keen to avoid a potentially similar situation, the force said Monday's suspect was a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area just two hours after the incident took place.
Usually when a suspect is arrested, police forces in England and Wales disclose the age of the person and where they were arrested, but there is no national guidance about what information to release and it is ultimately at the discretion of the chief constable, sources said.
They added that revealing suspects' nationalities would not happen in every case because it was not always relevant and may be an issue at trial in some cases.
'Given the events that followed the Southport attack there is obviously a heightened awareness of when information should be released to the public to prevent misinformation spreading,' one source said.
Dal Babu, a former chief superintendent of the Metropolitan Police, said the decision to release the ethnicity of the suspect so early was highly unusual.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, he said: 'What we do have, which is unprecedented, is the police very quickly giving the ethnicity and the race of the person who was driving the vehicle.
'It was Merseyside Police who didn't give that information with the Southport horrific murders of those three girls, and the rumours were that it was an asylum seeker who arrived on a boat and it was a Muslim extremist and that wasn't the case.
'So I think what the police have done very very quickly, and I've never known a case like this before where they've given the ethnicity and the race of the individual who was involved in it.
'I think that was to dampen down some of the speculation from the far-Right that sort of continues on X even as we speak that this was a Muslim extremist and there's a conspiracy theory.'
Violent disorder broke out in the Southport area in the aftermath of the attack and there was widespread rioting across the country.
Mr Babu said Merseyside Police had clearly learnt lessons from the Southport attack and was trying a new strategy to quell false narratives forming early.
He said: 'It's remarkably striking because police will not release that kind of information because they'll be worried about prejudicing any future trial, but I think they have to balance that against the potential of public disorder and we had massive public disorder after the far-right extremists had spread these rumours.'
Steve Rotheram, the mayor of Liverpool, defended the force's decision to release the ethnicity of the suspect.
He said: 'If you looked on social media, already within minutes of the incident being posted, there was speculation from some nefarious groups [who] were trying to stir up speculation around who was responsible for it.
'The whole idea was to put to bed the misinformation and disinformation that was out there to calm people.'
Merseyside Police held a press conference four and a half hours after the attack in which they provided further information, including the fact the man arrested was believed to be the driver of the vehicle, rather than a passenger. They also stated that the incident was not being treated as terrorism.
Asst Chief Constable Jenny Sims said: 'Extensive enquiries are ongoing to establish the circumstances leading up to the collision and it is vital that people do not speculate or spread misinformation on social media.'
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