Liverpool parade crash: How Southport attack forced police to change response

Independent

6 days ago

Within two hours of a car ploughing into crowds in Liverpool city centre, police had confirmed the alleged driver was a 53-year-old white man from the Merseyside area.
No doubt desperate to halt the spread of misinformation online, which had already begun to circulate on social media along with graphic footage of the incident, Merseyside Police made the unusual decision to share the suspect's ethnicity and nationality at the earliest stages of the investigation.
It marks a 'complete step change' in their approach to the response to the horrific knife attack in Southport last summer, police commentators have noted.
A vacuum of information in the aftermath of the stabbing at a children's dance class was filled with misinformation about the suspect's ethnicity and asylum status, which helped to fuel angry far-right riots which erupted across the country.
On that occasion, police had told the public they had arrested a 17-year-old from Banks in Lancashire, who was born in Cardiff, but it did little to quell the surge in inaccurate information being shared on social media.
The mass unrest illustrated all too starkly the new threat facing police responding to high profile incidents in an online age – the tinderbox of social media and weaponised misinformation.
After Monday's attack at Liverpool's Premier League victory parade, which wounded 50 and left thousands of shocked football fans stranded in the city centre, police acted faster.
Peter Williams, senior lecturer in policing at Liverpool John Moores University, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there has been a 'shift' in their approach.
He said: '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 later added: '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.'
Dal Babu, a former chief superintendent in London's Metropolitan Police, said it was 'unprecedented' and the police acted 'very quickly' in giving the ethnicity and race of the suspect. He said it was likely an effort to cool social media speculation that the episode was an Islamist attack.
Liverpool City Metro Mayor Steve Rotherham said it was 'absolutely the right thing to do' to put to put to bed online speculation.
'Because if you have a look at social media already, within minutes of the incident being posted, there was speculation, and there was some nefarious groups who were trying to stir up some speculation around who was responsible for it,' he said.
'So the whole idea was to put to bed some of that for, obviously, the misinformation and disinformation that was out there, and to try to calm people.'
Pressure on police responding to such attacks is not just coming from the public - politicians are also increasingly quick to demand information.
Comments from Reform leader Nigel Farage in the wake of the Southport attack, asking 'whether the truth is being withheld from us', were criticised for helping to fuel the unrest.
Shortly after yesterday's attack in Liverpool, shadow home secretary Chris Philp had posted on X: 'The public deserve to know the full facts as quickly as possible.'
However politicians will know all too well that police must balance the threat of public disorder with the risk of prejudicing any future trial.
Contempt of court laws strictly limit what can be shared about a case before it goes to trial.
Helen King, a former Merseyside Police assistant chief constable, warned we should not expect such information to be released as a matter of routine.
'I guess what concerns me is that with future incidents, there's always a risk that the police may not be able to do this, and we need to manage public and media expectations,' she said.
'There may be occasions when it's not clear, the information that the public are asking for. The police will not want to release inaccurate information and undermine public confidence in that way.
'And also there is a major criminal investigation ongoing now that investigation must not be compromised, and in future incidents, release of detail about suspects, about people arrested could potentially compromise an investigation or a court case.
She said sharing information was the 'right thing to do on this occasion', but said each incident will be different.
'It is a really difficult new world, isn't it that the police the courts are operating in it is we need to let the police do their job, let the other emergency services and prosecution authorities do their job and not go around demanding information,' she added.