The woman accused of being first to spread the fake rumours about the Southport killer which sparked nationwide riots has been arrested.
Racist riots spread across the country after misinformation spread on social media claiming the fatal stabbing was carried out by Ali Al-Shakati, believed to be a fictitious name, a Muslim aslyum seeker who was on an MI6 watchlist.
A 55-year-old woman from Chester has now been arrested on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred, and false communication. She remains in police custody.
Chief Superintendent Alison Ross said: ‘We have all seen the violent disorder that has taken place across the UK over the past week, much of which has been fuelled by malicious and inaccurate communications online.
In hindsight, maybe the police saying nothing didn’t help matters.
The internet exists, and it’s fast. Waiting a few days to say the suspect was British was not the right call. Especially when they’d already said the wonderful phrase “police do not believe the incident to be terror related” which as far as I can tell is code for “the suspect is not white, and Tommy Robinson is already on his way”.
If you create a void of information, somebody will fill it. There were plenty of eyewitnesses going around telling people what happened, and it’s not a far cry from “he was black” to “he was an asylum seeker”. There are bad actors out there, and they will use that void to their advantage.
Like you don’t need to give out personal info, or make stuff up, but a simple “police believe the suspect to be British” might have saved a lot of trouble.
Unfortunately their hands were tied. They don’t release information about minors. That’s just the law. It was determined shortly after by a judge to release the information due to the growing disinformation to quell violence, but the die had already been cast.
The reason they don’t release information is simply because they’re children, and they don’t want idolisation but also harassment to occur.
Same reason why names of mass murder events shouldn’t be released anyway, to prevent the perpetrators from becoming martyrs. They’re just known as “the killer” etc
Now this usually works fine as much as there are arguments for and against, however this event became somewhat a unique case, and an opportunity was found by malicious actors to use it for their own benefit.
After the Reform party gained considerable ground, they now need to keep momentum of having a constant “enemy” and “other” in the public eye, a never ending threat. Fascism 101.
And so, stoking the flames of the current migrant “crisis” if you let slip in certain places that the perpetrator was a migrant Muslim, you hope that the snowball can become an avalanche. And avalanche it did.
All the while the leaders such as Farage can claim innocence with very particular wording to wriggle out of any scrutiny.
The police cannot be going around releasing information the otherwise wouldn’t do just to stop dipshits online. There’s a reason they don’t release this information right away.
Let’s say there’s an investigation and somebody is murdered and in the course of the investigation for some reason the police think that you might be the murderer. They arrest you, and you provide DNA and it proves that you are innocent. I am sure you would not want your information released to the public in advance of a conviction.
This isn’t just a hypothetical either there has been plenty of cases where innocent people have been accused of a crime, and then exonerated, but by that point the damage to their reputation has already been done even though they did literally nothing wrong. The police have to confirm that the person they have in custody is the right person before they release info to the public. Also if the person is a kid there are even more protections in place.
Not super relevant, but don’t they apparently have more info on the Jack the Ripper killings that they still won’t release? Makes me think the “right away” is on a geological time scale
While I agree about releasing identifying information. A quick release of, “we have a suspect, they are not an immigrant.” right after that first night would go a long way.
If it helps… ACAB.
Not some. Not a handful. All of them.
This isn’t a personal attack. There are systems in place to ensure that shitty behavior is protected while good behavior is punished or made a edge case. Until the rot is fixed, cops cannot be a force of good.