The speed at which police released the race and ethnicity of the suspect in the Liverpool car incident is “unprecedented”, a former chief superintendent has said.
Merseyside Police confirmed they had a arrested a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area around two hours after the incident that left dozens of people, including four children, hurt.
The force was criticised in the wake of the Southport murders last summer for not releasing more information after false rumours were started online that the killer was a Muslim asylum seeker.
Former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent Dal Babu told BBC Radio 5 Live: “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… and 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, so 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.”
In March, Chief Constable Serena Kennedy told MPs she wanted to dispel disinformation in the immediate aftermath of the Southport murders by releasing information about attacker Axel Rudakubana’s religion, because he came from a Christian family, but was told not to by local crown prosecutors.
Police did disclose that the suspect was a 17-year-old male from Banks in Lancashire, who was born in Cardiff.
Widespread rioting followed the murders, with some disorder targeting mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers.
Mayor of the Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram backed the force’s unusual decision to release the information about the Liverpool suspect so quickly.
He told reporters: “If you have a look at my timeline, there was somebody very quickly saying ‘Why are you lying? There’s been another incident in another part of the city’, which obviously wasn’t true, and then they were trying to stir it up who might be responsible for it.
“That’s why I think the police acted… to dampen that sort of speculation, because it was designed to inflame. It was designed to divide.”
Asked if he would like to see similar details released in the future in similar cases, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “That is a matter for the police and the investigation is ongoing so I think we need to leave that to them.
“I think today is a day really for thinking about all those impacted by this and being absolutely clear that we stand with them.”
