At nine minutes past eight on the evening of Monday May 26, Merseyside Police did something that no other British police force had done before.
Just two hours after a car had collided with football fans celebrating Liverpool’s Premier League triumph in the crowded city centre, the force proactively published the ethnicity and nationality of the man they had arrested, who had by then been taken into custody.
In all cases where charging decisions are publicised forces should state the ethnic group and nationality of the individual accused
‘We can confirm the man arrested is a 53-year-old White British man from the Liverpool area,’ the police said in a press release.
The force had taken this unprecedented step to avoid misinformation and disinformation about the suspect’s background from fuelling unrest. It was anxious to avoid a repeat of what had happened in the aftermath of the Southport attacks ten months earlier when delays in revealing information about the suspect created a dangerous vacuum filled with rumour and fake reporting which contributed to the worst riots our country had seen for 13 years.
But although Merseyside Police were widely praised for their approach following the incident in May (for which Paul Doyle has been charged with offences of dangerous driving and grievous bodily harm with intent) it set expectations that some others in policing have not welcomed and did not follow.
Five days after the events in Liverpool, there was a serious collision in Leicester that left five pedestrians injured. Leicestershire Police took the opposite stance to the Merseyside force and declined to reveal the ethnic or nationality background details of those detained, which only ‘added to the community’s distress’, according to Vinod Popat, a spokesman for Leicester’s Hindu Community Organisation Groups.
‘In the absence of clear information, speculation and anxiety began to spread, especially given Leicester’s diverse and sensitive social fabric. We believe that timely and transparent communication is essential – not just for the sake of public clarity, but to uphold trust between communities and institutions,’ said Popat.
New interim guidance issued to forces in England and Wales today by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council is an attempt to bring about more openness – but it does not go nearly far enough and creates the risk that different approaches will continue to be adopted by individual forces.
The fresh guidance applies only to cases where a suspect has been charged. In the Merseyside and Leicestershire cases, the concerns centred mainly around events at the point of arrest; the guidance is silent on that, which means police will continue their usual practice of publishing only the age or age-group of a suspect, the general location where they live and the alleged offence for which they have been detained. There is no requirement in the guidance, nor even any suggestion, that ethnic group or nationality should be disclosed at this stage, which seems to be a glaring omission.
With regards to charging, the guidance merely makes ‘recommendations’ to chief officers considering confirming the nationality and/or ethnicity of suspects. It contains a check-list of factors which chiefs should refer to when making such decisions, such as whether there is a ‘policing purpose’, a risk of ‘rising community tension’ or ‘significant’ media or social media interest. The information would be disclosed only in serious cases, such as murder and rape, where incidents have already been reported or to reassure the public.
The police guidance is wide open to interpretation, as police guidance tends to be. Our system of policing leaves each of the 43 chief constables and their respective police and crime commissioners or mayors wide discretion over the way their force area is policed, in terms of priorities, strategies and communications. It is inevitable, therefore, that we will see some forces releasing ethnicity and nationality information but in similar cases other constabularies refusing to divulge it – sparking fresh rounds of misinformation, conspiracy theories and claims of cover-ups.
What is needed, instead, is a simpler set of rules for police to follow. In all cases where charging decisions are publicised forces should state the ethnic group and nationality of the individual accused. Police would be permitted to depart from the rules only in exceptional circumstances, such as where the identity of a suspect could be an issue at trial. There should also be a presumption that forces disclose the ethnicity and nationality at the arrest stage in sensitive and high-profile cases.
We need to reach a point where issues of race and nationality can be discussed in a calmer environment than in the current febrile atmosphere where certain crimes are singled out just because the suspect may be a foreign national, and where concerns escalate that information is being kept back for party political or politically correct reasons.
Routinely making ethnicity and nationality details available will bring about a less toxic and more informed debate far more quickly than the pick-and-mix approach which this interim police guidance will undoubtedly lead to.
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