A short while back this blog published an article about how Gloucestershire Police were hiding the identity of a man who was arrested and charged for alleged attempted kidnapping and hammer attack offences, but was refusing to name the suspect post charge or even name the court that the man appeared at. This as I pointed out at the time was highly unusual and the police’s excuse that they made this decision for ‘operational reasons’, didn’t appear to me to be valid. Secrecy like this is nearly unknown and in my experience has only been used where there is a national security aspect to the case, where the victim is a minor and related to the allege offender or if the police are searching for other suspects. None of these reasons appear to apply in this case.

But, Gloucestershire Police have now come clean and given the name of the suspect who has been charged. One of this blog’s commenters pointed out that the newspaper that originally pointed out the police’s odd actions in this case has amended the story to include the name of the alleged attacker.

The Daily Mail’s amended story contained the following paragraphs:

The suspect was named as Benjamin John Wilkinson, aged 29, of Abbeymead in Gloucester after Gloucestershire Police had initially refused to name the suspect, despite him being charged and appearing in court.  

Gloucestershire Police initially said the unusual secrecy over Wilkinson’s name was for ‘operational reasons’, but today clarified: ‘the name hadn’t been included in a proactive press release because it was more an appeal, rather than a traditional charge press release, and we didn’t want it to be prejudicial.’

I don’t know about you but I smell the distinct odour of bullshit coming from Gloucestershire Constabulary about this matter. There have rarely been concerns from police about being prejudicial in other cases where they have, as per normal procedure, named suspects after charge. The original statement from the police was nothing like any normal appeal for information, I think we’ve all seen enough of these post charge press releases to be able to tell the difference between a post charge press release and an appeal for information. Something really does still smell bad about this case and the way that the police have handled it.

I do wonder what has happened to make Gloucester Police change their minds on this matter? There is of course the distinct possibility that pressure from the Mail, including legal threats, has made them change their mind. Another possibility is that the police’s overly secretive actions set a rumour mill going. I suspect that the overt and unnecessary secrecy by Gloucester Police has turned out to be counterproductive.

The act of secrecy by the police will have got a lot of speculation going and much of that speculation will no doubt have been about the identity of the alleged attacker and the community from which he came. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the secrecy caused a lot of people to wonder, erroneously as it turns out, whether the offender was some sort of ‘enricher’ or from a minority community that the police go out of their way to protect whilst at the same time ignoring many of the problems that come from said community. Maybe the police thought that they could get away with this outrageous and unnecessary act of secrecy only to find that all it did was send a rumour mill into overdrive. All that has been achieved by the actions of Gloucestershire Police is to cause unnecessary rumour-mongering, damage to their own reputation and a loss of trust in this force by the public. This was an own goal by Gloucestershire Police if ever there was one.