Police identify Liverpool parade crash suspect as white British within hours - after being accused of fueling Southport riots with information vacuum
The force announced they had arrested 'a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area' two hours after a crowd ploughed into fans watching Liverpool FC's Premier League trophy parade - leaving at least 47 injured.
The force was criticised in the wake of the Southport murders last summer for not releasing information about the killer's ethnicity and religion after false rumours were started online that he was a Muslim asylum seeker.
Former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent Dal Babu said it was 'unprecedented' that the police 'very quickly' gave the ethnicity and race of the ramming suspect.
'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 I think that was, 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,' he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
'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.'
The force announced they had arrested 'a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area' around two hours later
Asked if it was a result of Merseyside Police having learned the lessons from what happened after Southport, he said: 'Yeah, absolutely, I think you're spot on.
'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.'
At a press conference on the evening of the Southport stabbings on July 29 last year, Merseyside Police described the man they had arrested as a 17-year-old male from Banks in Lancashire, who is originally from Cardiff'.
In the meantime, false rumours that he was a Muslim asylum seeker who had come over on a small boat spread online, prompting attacks on mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers.
Two days after the attack, on July 31, a new police statement clarified that he had been 'born in Cardiff'. Newspapers published his photo on August 2, but his race or ethnicity was never mentioned by police.
Chief Constable Serena Kennedy later told MPs she wanted to dispel disinformation in the immediate aftermath of the Southport murders by releasing information about the attacker Axel Rudakubana's religion, as he came from a Christian family, but was told not to by local crown prosecutors.
Today, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride MP says that police 'were right' to release prompt information on the suspect's ethnicity.
'It's important that police get information out in a prompt and timely manner and there was criticism around Southport and the vacuum that was created and then filled - in part at least - by social media and conspiracy theories,' he said.
'So I think the police have done the right thing.'
But Sir Keir Starmer said the issue was a 'matter for the police'.
And asked if he would like to see similar details released in the future in similar cases, the Prime Minister 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.'
Peter Williams, senior lecturer in policing at Liverpool John Moores University, described the move as a 'complete step change'.
'It has been a shift, because, particularly in relation to the aftermath of Southport... there was a lot of criticism focused at Merseyside Police and of course the CPS, in relation to how the management of information was sort of dealt with,' he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
'But also, if listeners cast their mind back further, is the investigation into Nicola Bulley as how the management of the information was responded to on that occasion. That led to a College of Policing inquiry.'
Mr Williams said one of the recommendations made after the Southport attack was to prevent any 'vacuums' of information in future incidents, particularly where there is harmful online content.
He continued: 'It was no surprise to me last night that within an hour or so, we got a statement to say what had happened and that somebody, a male, had been detained. Later on, there was a press conference led by the Assistant Chief Constable, where she shared a lot more information.
'As that investigation progresses, which will be a major one led by the major investigation team, that will be shared with the public, so there's been a complete step change in how the police will be communicating what has occurred with the public.'
Rudakubana was found by police to be in possession of a PDF file titled 'Military Studies in the Jihad against Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual'.
He also possessed numerous other documents on violent subjects, including A Concise History Of Nazi Germany, The Myth Of The Remote Controlled Car Bomb and Amerindian Torture And Cultural Violence.
Police said the material discovered showed an 'obsession with extreme violence' but there was no evidence he ascribed to any political or religious ideology or was 'fighting for a cause'.
The 53-year-old man arrested over the Liverpool parade ramming is still being held by police.
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