Merseyside Police quickly released the race and ethnicity of the Liverpool ramming suspect - after being accused of fueling the summer riots with an 'information vacuum'.
The force announced they had arrested 'a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area' two hours after a crowd ploughed into fans watching Liverpool FC's Premier League trophy parade - leaving at least 47 injured.
The force was criticised in the wake of the Southport murders last summer for not releasing information about the killer's ethnicity and religion after false rumours were started online that he was a Muslim asylum seeker.
Former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent Dal Babu said it was 'unprecedented' that the police 'very quickly' gave the ethnicity and race of the ramming suspect.
'What we do have, which is unprecedented, is the police very quickly giving the ethnicity and the race of the person who was driving the vehicle and I think that was, and it was Merseyside Police who didn't give that information with the Southport horrific murders of those three girls, and the rumours were that it was an asylum seeker who arrived on a boat and it was a Muslim extremist and that wasn't the case,' he told BBC Radio 5 Live.
