Police quickly identify Liverpool parade crash suspect as white British, earning praise for transparency after facing criticism for lack of information during Southport riots.

Merseyside Police responded promptly by revealing the race and ethnicity of the individual involved in the ramming incident in Liverpool. This came after facing criticism for contributing to unrest during the summer riots due to a lack of information.

The police disclosed that they had apprehended a 53-year-old white British man from the local Liverpool area just two hours after the incident where a vehicle plowed into spectators at Liverpool FC’s Premier League trophy celebration, resulting in at least 47 casualties.

Following previous criticism for withholding details about a perpetrator’s ethnicity and religion after the Southport murders, the police have decided to be more proactive in providing such information to address any potential misinformation circulating online.

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.’

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.’

Mayor of the Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram also backed the force’s decision.

He told reporters: ‘If you have a look at my timeline, there was somebody very quickly saying ”Why are you lying? There’s been another incident in another part of the city”, which obviously wasn’t true, and then they were trying to stir it up who might be responsible for it.

‘That’s why I think the police acted… to dampen that sort of speculation, because it was designed to inflame. It was designed to divide.’

But asked if he would like to see similar details released in the future in similar cases, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said this was ‘a matter for the policy’. 

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.’

Today, Nigel Farage welcomed that Merseyside Police had ‘begun to learn some of the lessons’ and said it was necessary to ‘let us know the truth’ to squash ‘crazy’ online theories.

‘Had the truth been known we would not have had these situations (riots),’ he added.

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. 

Assistant Chief Constable Jenny Sims has said the incident is not currently being treated as terrorism.