Ann Widdecombe Police Statements Expand Criteria for Disclosing Details About Arrested Suspects

From BBC News: Police say a 28-year-old man has been arrested in South Yorkshire on suspicion of the murder of Ann Widdecombe. “The suspect, who is a white British national, is now in police custody,” a statement from Devon and Cornwall Police said. Police had announced as part of their appeal for information on Friday that they were looking for a white individual, and so the statement confirms that the suspect fits the description. And having gone that far, then why not add that the suspect is British as well? The police statement is the latest example of the trend I noted last month in which police increasingly choose to disclose an arrested suspect’s ethnicity and nationality, rather than just age and sex. The purpose, of course, is to pre-empt or counter racist disinformation and incitement; but as I noted then, it comes with downsides. Online populists now routinely say that when ethnic information is not released then we can infer that an arrested suspect must be either from an…