In the aftermath of a car being driven into crowds of people on Water Street in Liverpool yesterday, Merseyside Police have been active in their communications response.
It was less than two hours after the emergency services had first been contacted that the police announced a 53-year-old white British man from Liverpool had been arrested; the force also issued a request for “people not to speculate on the circumstances surrounding tonight’s incident”.
A further statement from the assistant chief constable just before midnight confirmed that the man arrested was believed to be the driver of the vehicle.
Merseyside Police is working, of course, in the shadow of last year’s murder of three young children and the injuring of 10 others in Southport by Axel Rudakubana.
The police initially said only that “a 17-year-old male from Banks”, a small village on the outskirts of Southport, had been arrested. With what proved to be undue confidence, they added that “the incident is not currently being treated as terror-related”.
In the hours and days after the savage attack, social media crackled with rumours and allegations about the identity of the suspect. It was only the following day that the police disclosed that Rudakubana was the child of Rwandan parents.
But they were on the back foot: a LinkedIn post had already claimed that “a migrant” was responsible, while a US-based website identified the suspect, wrongly, as an “asylum seeker” named “Ali al-Shakati” who had “arrived in the UK by boat last year” and had been “on the MI6 watch list”.
In the absence of further official details, the false and misleading claims were quickly spread and amplified: where there is a void, the media ecosystem will fill it, accurately or inaccurately.
False information raised the temperature of the public mood, already shocked and angry, and it contributed in considerable part to riots that took place across the country in August. Merseyside Police had acted out of caution, but their media management had simply been too slow and clumsy.
Advising that some information was misleading and warning people not to speculate was unrealistic in the absence of further, accurate details, and they effectively ceded the initiative to both those who were angry and anxious, and to more malign actors seeking to create tension and division.
Late last year. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, commissioned His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) to review the police response to the widespread disorder.
Earlier this month, the inspectorate released a second report as part of its investigation, concluding that “the police service struggled to manage illegal and harmful online content, including misinformation and disinformation”.
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By failing to react quickly and forcefully to misleading reports, the police had ceded the initiative, with serious consequences.
Merseyside Police must, understandably, have allowed itself a small collective sigh of relief on Monday when it had been able to announce that the suspect taken into custody was a white British man from the local area.
We cannot be coy about this. When there is news of a vehicle being driven into a crowd, many people’s first thought, understandably, is of Islamic-inspired terrorism: Munich in February this year, Colombes near Paris in April 2020, Manhattan in October 2017, Barcelona in August 2017, London Bridge in June 2017, Westminster in March 2017, Nice in July 2016. We have seen this before, too many times.
This time, the police have prevented the spread of false allegations with early, active disclosure of information.
But they have also created a dangerous precedent which may haunt law enforcement in similar situations in the future.
This week, they were able to reassure the public, if “reassure” is the right word, that the suspect was not an immigrant or an asylum-seeker, nor a radical Islamist.
What would happen after a future incident in which the suspect proved in fact to be an Afghan refugee, an asylum-seeker from East Africa, or an immigrant from South Asia?
If the police did not release that information promptly – remember that on Monday it took Merseyside Police less than two hours – the silence would speak just as loudly as any official statement.
The conclusion would quickly be drawn that silence indicated an inability to “reassure” the public.
What is worse, the public would feel not only that the truth was being withheld, but that it was being withheld in an attempt to manipulate and control them, that they were being deceived because the forces of law and order did not trust them. It would seem like the worst kind of Establishment, de haut en bas contempt.
Public disclosure is a door that only opens one way. Merseyside Police’s rapid identification of the suspect’s age and ethnic background has set a benchmark. Any other force falling short of that measure in the future will eloquently, if tacitly, tell its own story.
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