Suspect Disclosure of details may create 'difficulties' for police

Merseyside police's decision to release details of the ethnicity of the suspect in the Liverpool parade collision could raise "difficulties and challenges" for forces in the future, a former superintendent has said.

- Aamna Mohdin Vikram Dodd Rajeev Syal

Merseyside police said they arrested a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area about two hours after the incident that left dozens of people, including four children, injured.

Dal Babu, who was a senior Met officer, said the decision was "unprecedented", but he could envisage pressure being applied to forces in future to release details on the racial background of suspects.

"It doesn't take rocket science to predict what will happen: the far right will twist this and say: 'Right, you've named him because it's a white person. Why aren't you naming the next person?' And it will present some difficulties and challenges to the police," he said.

Babu stressed the decision had been "correct" to share the information on this occasion to combat "racist and Islamophobic misinformation" on social media, while warning that every decision should be taken on a case-by-case basis.

"You could imagine a situation where the far right will say: 'Oh, you haven't named the ethnicity of this person and that's because they are a person of colour'," he said.

"It's really important that people don't see it as a precedent because every incident will be different. People may feel in a future incident that they're entitled to know the ethnicity and race, and it may not be appropriate to release it," he said.