Clear rules are needed for police disclosures to stop information being weaponised

What should police say about an alleged perpetrator in a high-profile case or a critical incident?

- Leroy Logan

Perpetrators have rights that the police must respect, yet the public increasingly asserts a right to know more. My time in the Met has taught me that these complex matters always draw public attention, especially when they involve a suspect's ethnicity and nationality.

I've also noticed inconsistencies in how forces across the country release information - in both content and timing. These gaps are amplified by the increasing pressures of social media. For example, the Rotherham grooming cases, which ran from the late 1980s to 2013, demonstrated how withholding credible information contributed to it becoming a national scandal. This year's review by Baroness Casey highlighted serious failings in how police recorded ethnicity data on group-based child sexual abuse. Given that more than 80% of the population is white, it can be significant when white individuals do not constitute the majority of victims or perpetrators in crime.

More recently, in July 2024, the Southport stabbings had critical consequences due to the slow disclosure of the suspect's background. False claims by far-right groups, along with growing Islamophobic, racist and anti-immigrant sentiments, fuelled subsequent riots. The truth - that he was a British national - emerged too late to stop the unrest. Earlier disclosure might have reduced the scale of the riots or prevented them.