Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram says the police’s decision to divulge information about the suspect’s ethnicity is a sign that social media can be a “cesspit”.He reacted to the arrest of a 53-year-old white British male following a horror car ramming incident during Liverpool FC’s Premier League parade celebrations.Reacting to the incident, Rotheram hit out at people “nefariously” sharing untrue information online.“I didn’t want that speculation to cause any concern and it was the right decision taken by Merseyside Police to put that information out”, he said.
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00:00Are they moving quickly enough in terms of the police now? I know they did, you know, I think everybody feels they did well to say more about the suspect last night and it definitely helped. But do you think they could move any quicker today? Should we hear more from them today, for example?
00:16Well, there will be more today. And look, they are acting as quickly as it's feasible to do. The first thing they have to do is obviously to secure the area and they did that very quickly. And if you have a look, people dispersed really very quickly once the police were on scene.
00:35And I'd just like to thank all the people who were here for doing that, because then that allowed them then to gather the evidence. And now they're assessing all of that.
00:45And of course, they'll have conversations with the driver who's apprehended at the scene and arrested. So all of that is in line now.
00:55And we'll make certain that if there is anything to say, it's the police who allow us to speak to the press after they, of course, put a statement out or had the press conference.
01:09Mayor Oldham, you touched upon some of the negative social media reaction. Do you think it's significant that the police chose to name the suspect's race in this case?
01:17That's not something that usually happens. I mean, what does that say about the state of the country at the moment?
01:21Well, it says that social media can be a suspect. There are lots of good things, as I just said, about people offering lifts and opening the doors.
01:30But social media could have created the conditions where more concern could have been raised for the people who were stuck here because we had to shut down the transport system.
01:39That's what happens when there's a major incident. So all of a sudden they can't get away from the city.
01:45And yet there are people nefariously online telling them that there's possibly other things that have happened, which were untrue, of course.
01:56And so I didn't want that speculation to cause any concern.
02:00And that's the right decision taken by Merseyside Police to put that information out.
02:05There must have been a part of your head last night when that social media speculation was kind of gaining traction that was thinking about last summer's riots and worrying that something similar might happen.
02:21I mean, do you worry that we live in a society now where things can very quickly escalate to that point?
02:26Look, first of all, I'm a human being, and then I'm a dad, and then I'm a politician.
02:32So as a dad, first of all, when your kids are here or some of your family, you're concerned about that, the bit about the politician is that you have to learn lessons.
02:46And I've seen from what's happened previously that those things can run right and you have to put them to bed very, very early and very quickly.
02:54I think that's why Merseyside Police acted so quickly and so correctly in trying to dampen some of the nefarious stories that were abounding at the time.
03:06Otherwise, you can imagine people would have been worried about whether there's other things that they're going to walk into.
03:11And at the first opportunity, we opened up the public transport system, and it was the staff who volunteered to stay late and run late services because we'd had that hiatus where it was all locked down, and they got people home safely.
03:26And they're some of the other people who need to be recognised in this narrative as well.
03:30Because they're...
03:31Because they're...