The family of one of the three girls killed in the Southport attack last year has criticised new police guidance that recommends forces share suspects’ ethnicity and nationality with the public.
The interim guidance by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing comes after mounting pressure on police to increase transparency around the identity of offenders.
Police forces have been instructed to share suspects’ ethnicity and nationality with the public after authorities were accused of covering up offences carried out by asylum seekers, and in the wake of riots sparked by social media disinformation after the Southport murders.
In an interview with The Guardian, Michael Weston King, the grandfather of Bebe King, who along with Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar was killed by Axel Rudakubana, said the ethnicity of serious crime suspects is “completely irrelevant”.
Disclosing the race and immigration status of high-profile suspects became official police guidance on Wednesday.
“I not only speak for myself but for all of the King family when I say that the ethnicity of any perpetrator, or indeed their immigration status, is completely irrelevant,” Mr Weston King said.
“Mental health issues, and the propensity to commit crime, happens in any ethnicity, nationality or race.
“The boy who took Bebe had been failed by various organisations, who were aware of his behaviour, and by the previous government’s lack of investment in Prevent. As a result, we were also failed by this.”
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called for more transparency from police about suspects, while Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said that he “absolutely” believes that information about charged suspects’ immigration status should be made available by police.
It is hoped the change could combat the spread of misinformation on social media, after Merseyside Police was criticised for not revealing the ethnicity of Rudakabana when he was arrested after he attacked a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport in July 2024.
Within hours of the attack, posts spread on the internet claiming the suspect was a 17-year-old asylum seeker who had come to the country by boat last year.
In the first press conference after the event, at 6.30pm that day, Merseyside Police Chief Constable Serena Kennedy told journalists the suspect was originally from Cardiff.
But the police statement did little to quell the misinformation spreading online, and the next day, riots began across the country.
