28 May 2025, 16:04
The head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, said forces will more often have to release personal details about suspects earlier, following the Liverpool FC parade crash.
The head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Mark Rowley, said forces will more often have to release personal details about suspects earlier, following the Liverpool FC parade crash. Picture: Alamy
By Josef Al Shemary
The head of the Metropolitan Police said forces will more often have to release personal details about suspects earlier, following the Liverpool FC parade crash.
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Merseyside Police confirmed the ethnicity of the suspect, a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area, just two hours after the incident that left dozens of people including four children hurt.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley was asked if Merseyside Police were right to release the ethnicity of the suspect.
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.
Widespread rioting followed the murders, with most of the disorder targeting mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers - which many consider a direct result of the racist rumours.
Sir Mark now said the force has to ‘be realistic’ when assessing whether to release details earlier, and that they should do so more often.
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The Police Commissioner said he would not criticise the chief of Merseyside Police, who decided to release the suspect’s details, and that those decisions need to be made on a case-by-case basis.
Asked if moving in the direction of declaring a suspect's ethnicity sooner is the way to go, Sir Mark said: "In general, I think we have to be realistic and more often... put more personal details in public, earlier.”
He added that we are in an age of citizen journalism and that information can spread through social media very quickly, which can lead to people guessing about the suspect’s identity.
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"In that world, putting more facts out is the only way to deal with it,” he said, adding that if those facts "embolden racists" in some cases then "we need to confront those individuals", and added: "Trying to avoid truths when half the truth is in the public domain is going to be quite difficult, going forward."
Sir Keir Starmer has said that it is a "matter for the police" that they gave details about the man who was arrested after a car ploughed into a crowd celebrating Liverpool's Premier League win.
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."
Chairman of the National Police Chiefs' Council, Gavin Stephens, said while transparency would help stop the spread of misinformation and disinformation, the public would also have to trust officers when they are not able to give out details about suspects.
He told journalists at a briefing in Westminster: "Some of this information is going to appear online very quickly from other sources, people's own mobile phone footage, the passing cyclist with a helmet camera, and assumptions will get made on the back of that material that's already in the public domain.
LBC caller John believes police were 'right' to release Liverpool suspect's ethnicity
"It's incumbent upon policing to be as transparent as we can be in order to protect wider public safety and be open with the public.
"What we can't do, of course, and nor would we ever want to, is jeopardize any ongoing court proceedings that might arise.
"There will be cases where policing will have to say, 'we are not releasing that information now for very good reason', and sometimes we might not be able to give that reason publicly.
"But hopefully, in demonstrating transparency on those cases where we definitely can be transparent, hopefully, it will help to build trust that if we do say, look, on this occasion, we can't, that people will understand why."
On Tuesday, former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent Dal Babu told BBC Radio 5 Live the speed at which police released the race and ethnicity of the suspect in the Liverpool car incident is "unprecedented".
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, but widespread rioting followed regardless.