Police should disclose ethnicity of suspects, says Met chief
The head of Britain's biggest police force has suggested that releasing the personal details of suspects, such as their ethnicity, should happen routinely, following the parade crash in Liverpool.
Merseyside police disclosed that the suspect in the Liverpool collision was a 'white British' man within two hours of the incident on Monday.
It has been viewed as the force learning lessons from the Southport attacks, after which conspiracy theories proliferated in an information vacuum about the suspect.
Forensic officers at the scene after a car was driven into a crowd in Liverpool on Monday
ADAM VAUGHAN/EPA
• Why were police quick to describe Liverpool suspect as white British?
Sir Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told Radio 4's Today programme: 'I'm not going to criticise another police chief who makes a judgment in a really difficult, complex situation.
'Every case needs judging on its merits. I think as we go forward in the future, we would always want to be more transparent in terms of the data we release. Sometimes, the nature of the investigation, the nature of case, makes that difficult but, in principle, of course transparency is good.'
Rowley said he wanted to see increased transparency
JOSHUA BRATT FOR THE TIMES
When asked whether declaring a suspect's ethnicity sooner was potentially the way forward, Rowley said: 'In general, I think we have to be realistic and more often … put more personal details in [the] public [domain] earlier.'
He added that, in an age of citizen journalism, 'some content will be all over social media very, very quickly' and people would be 'making guesses and inferences' so 'in that world, putting more facts out is the only way to deal with it'.
• Liverpool fans showed pure happiness — all that vanished after the crash
Rowley said that if those facts 'embolden racists' in some cases 'we need to confront those individuals'. He added: 'Trying to avoid truths when half the truth is in the public domain is going to be quite difficult, going forward.'
On Tuesday, Jonathan Hall KC, the independent adviser on terrorism legislation, said that the decision to release more details about the Liverpool suspect showed police had learnt their lesson and changed their approach after Southport. He had been critical about their failure to give accurate and timely information after the murder of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on July 29 last year.
Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer
ELIZABETH COOK/PA
Hall said: 'The lesson has been learnt: don't give any fuel to the conspiracy merchants. You've got to roll with it. If it had been a Muslim, an Asian, a black man or woman, they would have to say that. You've got to be fully consistent.'
In April, a report by MPs found that 'inconsistent advice' from the Crown Prosecution Service about whether to publicly reveal Axel Rudakubana's Christian background created an information vacuum that 'allowed disinformation to flourish'.
Hall added that it was important for the authorities to be 'fully consistent' and give details on suspects, whatever their race, ethnicity and background. 'I wouldn't underestimate people's ability to receive the truth — that's the most important thing.'
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