Merseyside police’s decision to release details of the ethnicity of the suspect in the Liverpool parade collision could raise “difficulties and challenges” for forces in the future, a former superintendent has said.
Merseyside police said they arrested a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area about two hours after the incident that left dozens of people, including four children, injured.
Dal Babu, who was a senior Met officer, told the Guardian’s First Edition that the decision was “unprecedented”, but he could envisage pressure being applied to forces in future to release details on the racial background of suspects.
“It doesn’t take rocket science to predict what will happen: the far right will twist this and say, ‘right, you’ve named him because it’s a white person. Why aren’t you naming the next person?’ And it will present some difficulties and challenges to the police”, he said.
Babu stressed the decision had been “correct” to share the information on this occasion to combat “racist and Islamophobic misinformation” on social media, while warning that every decision should be taken on a case by case basis.
“You could imagine a situation where the far right will say, ‘Oh, you haven’t named the ethnicity of this person and that’s because they are a person of colour’,” he said.
“It’s really important that people don’t see it as a precedent because every incident will be different. People may feel in a future incident that they’re entitled to know the ethnicity and race, and it may not be appropriate to release it,” he said.
A senior legal source said there could be circumstances where naming the ethnicity of a suspect could cause riots rather than quell them.
“What will a force do if they arrest someone in similar circumstances who is recently arrived on a small boat or who has a clearly Muslim name? They will now be under huge pressure to name them,” the source said.
Far-right extremists used social media within minutes of the Liverpool tragedy to exploit the scenes of horror, the Guardian has been told.
One account claimed the incident was a terrorist attack.
Another account also made false claims including that the man arrested by police at the scene was really a Muslim, despite what police had said.
Merseyside police were 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.
For Merseyside police, Monday night’s decision to release details about the suspect’s race and nationality was not a precedent.
“They believe in this case it was right, with detectives convinced the suspect detained was the only person they were looking for. It might not be right in a case where the identity of a suspect was unclear and where identity could be an issue at trial,” a source said.
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.
Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s official reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the Guardian that Merseyside’s decision on Monday evening should set a precedent for future incidents.
“The authorities seemed to have learned the lessons of Southport.
“It should be a precedent, while recognising there will be the odd case where you need to say little or nothing. Transparency is the right precedent.”
Hall said if a suspect in a high-profile case was a Muslim asylum seeker: “You have to do that as well.”
Nick Lowles, of Hope Not Hate, a leading group monitoring the far right, said: “Police have learned lessons after Southport. What they did this time was to fill the void, putting information out as soon as possible.
“If it had been a terrorist attack, I’m not sure anything would have calmed tensions down.”
The decision to release details was an operational matter and therefore separate from government, Whitehall sources said.
Asked if he would like to see similar details released in the future in similar cases, the prime minister, 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.”