Yesterday there was a horrific knife attack on a pregnant woman in the town of Aberfan in Wales. Thankfully, according to news reports, the lady in question did not suffer life threatening injuries and the alleged attacker has been apprehended but at the time of writing has not yet been charged.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the actual incident or speculate on the case because of matters pertaining to sub judice. But what I do want to do is point out how the police’s communications with the public went a long way to creating speculation as to the nature of the incident.

It’s clear from the various reports on this matter that this was not a terrorist attack, it’s likely to be something much more basic and mundane than that and the eventual trial of the alleged assailant will bring a great deal of background information into the public eye. However following the initial reports of the incident the behaviour of the police, at least with regards to their press and public relations, gave rise to speculation as to whether or not this could be a terrorist attack.

I must admit that the stabbing of a pregnant woman in the street in what initially looked to be a random attack was reminiscent of the modus operandi of Islamic terrorists but unlike some I held back from commenting about this incident and ascribing it to Islamic terror on the grounds that I did not have enough information to do so. Others were not so reticent. They immediately categorised the attack as being Islamic in nature.

It’s highly likely that those who called this as Islamic terror were wrong but there might have been less of these sorts of inaccurate comments and speculation had the police handled their press and PR a bit differently.

Firstly there was no description of the alleged attacker given by the police even though there was a high profile and very well resourced manhunt going on to catch him. The failure to give a description of the man they were seeking to speak to with regards to this attack created much speculation. Most of this speculation revolved about whether the assailant was a Muslim and that the police were hiding this fact.

Whilst this is clearly not the case here, the reason that people, on social media mostly, jumped to this conclusion is that due to police failures in cases involving Islamic miscreants. The public, who have seen, read about and experienced police failures such as police inaction in Islamic Rape Gang cases, police being overly concerned with ‘community cohesion’ and the obviously partisan policing of the pro-Hamas hate marches that have scarred British towns and cities, have become cynical with regards to the police. The public see a ‘no name no description ‘ aspect to a story and immediately assume that the police are hiding something and in particular hiding something Islamic.

Of course I understand that the police will not give names of those who have not been charged, even if they are suspects at large and this is partially because both the police and the press got severely burned after the Christopher Jefferies case when an innocent man was smeared by being described as a suspect in a murder case based on information given by police. However this restriction should not have applied to a mere description of someone the police were very interested in talking to with regards to the Aberfan attack. A description might have even resulted in the suspect being apprehended earlier but it would also have neutralised much speculation as to the suspect’s nature and the nature of the attack.

Secondly the police should, if they had good grounds to say so, which I believe they did in this case, have come out with a declaration that this was not terrorism much earlier than they did. By failing to make this aspect of the case clear the police in charge of this operation created a situation where wrong-headed speculation would abound.

The tragic and horrible Aberfan incident was seized upon and speculated about because too many police forces have garnered themselves an unenviable reputation for two tier policing, especially where Islam is concerned. The police therefore should have been aware that failing to give sufficient information to the public would encourage speculation of the sort that emerged. Maybe if the police had given a description of the alleged attacker and quashed terrorism speculation much earlier on then they would not have given ammunition to those who, sadly correctly, have become cynical about police statements and police motivations. The state has created a situation where many more people than used to be the case are now highly cynical about police statements. The ball is now in the court of our police forces to see that this PR disaster for the police who managed the communications for the Aberfan incident doesn’t occur again. It should have been possible for the police to protect both the course of justice and innocent individuals without creating the conditions for speculation to thrive. Shame that they did not do that.