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LONDON — When a minivan plowed into a crowd of soccer fans in Liverpool about 6 p.m. Monday, one of the first bits of official information the police released was the age, ethnicity and nationality of a man apprehended at the scene.
"We can confirm that the man arrested is a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area," Liverpool police said in a post on X while paramedics were still treating injured fans and getting dozens of them to hospitals.
The biographical detail was a departure from the typically closed-mouth approach of British police as investigations unfold, especially in their early hours. But officials were seemingly determined to head off the kind of dangerous backlash that has accompanied other shocking attacks and accidents, some of which have been followed by a wave of racially charged disinformation that leads to further violence.
"It was a real step away from the usual information released," said Peter Williams, police communications expert at John Moores University's Liverpool Center for Advanced Policing. "The social media part of this is something they have been really grappling with."
Police announced Tuesday that the 53-year-old man was charged on suspicion of attempted murder, dangerous driving and being under the influence of drugs when he followed an ambulance into a blocked street. The man remained in custody and his motives were still under investigation, police said.
Almost 50 people were injured in Monday's incident, which came as fans were gathered in the city center for a parade to celebrate Liverpool's Premier League soccer championship. At least 27 people were taken to hospitals and two remained in serious condition Tuesday. There were no reported fatalities, and police said late Monday they had not been not seeking other suspects or treating the incident as terrorism.
The potential explosiveness of the situation was well-known in Liverpool, one of many cities in Britain and Europe where fears of terrorism and tensions over immigration have been quick to flare, and where social media outrage has transformed into real-world brutality.
The same Merseyside Police Department, named for Liverpool's broader county, was widely criticized last summer for keeping some information tight after an attacker stabbed three young girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in the nearby town of Southport.
Police, bound by additional privacy protections for juveniles, initially said only that a "17-year-old male" from a town in Lancashire had been arrested. Speculation laced with outright falsehoods raced across social media that the suspect was a Muslim asylum-seeker who was on counterterrorism watch lists.
Infrequent police updates - among them, that the boy had been born in Wales - did little to quell the rage being deliberately stoked, including by right-wing nationalist groups.
"Quite often in this disinformation space it is the vacuum and the ideas of government cover-ups that are as important as the specific facts being speculated about," said Jonathan Hall, an attorney who serves as the British government's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, and who had been critical of the police's slow release of information following the stabbings.
Crowds attacked a mosque in Southport the day after the stabbings as Britain's worst riots in nearly a decade erupted over several days. Mobs targeted hotels housing migrants, and some 53 police officers were injured.
Only after the riots had ended did police reveal that the accused attacker was a Christian, born to parents who had legally immigrated to Britain from Rwanda years earlier. By then, a raft of online conspiracy theories had been entrenched, and hundreds of people had been arrested.
Monday's ramming event threatened to reignite the chaos. Within minutes of the car hitting the crowd, social media provocateurs were reposting videos and driving speculation. "Was his name Mohamad," wrote one poster on X. "The West must wake up," said another.
The quick release of the arrested man's race and nationality may have cut short that dynamic. By Tuesday, much of the coverage of the event focused on the reaction of Liverpudlians at the scene and questions about traffic control and event planning.
"It does seemed to have died away on social media," Williams said. He expects other departments to loosen up their communication policies after similar events.
"I think it's very significant," Hall said of the police response this time. "Here it was apparently clear early on that there was no one else involved and there wasn't terrorism. Authorities did the right thing."
According to witnesses, the vehicle appeared stuck and unmoving on a closed and crowded road before suddenly lurching backward, and then plowing forward, as pedestrians rocked the car and pounded on the windows.
Police said Tuesday they believe the man trailed behind an ambulance that was let onto the closed street. The ambulance was trying to reach a parade spectator who needed assistance for a possible heart attack. Officials did not say whether the man intentionally tried to drive into the crowd or was too impaired to recognize the danger. The investigation was continuing, they said.
Officials have been wrestling with the growing role that social media outrage - fact-based or not - can play as a follow-on crisis to explosive events. A government-ordered review published this month found that most police departments in Britain have not kept up with the risks posed by the "overwhelming speed and volume" of online invective.
The report, written by His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Andy Cooke, called for more intelligence of online groups, better self-regulation by social media companies and, among other measures, for police to be more transparent with information that could counter false claims.
"That's obviously a lesson learned," Williams said of the Liverpool response Monday.
(COMMENT, BELOW)