Police Senior Investigating Officers — or SIOs — leading murder investigations receive media management training. Indeed, the SIO’s “media strategy” can make or break an investigation, assisting in the identification of suspects.

Yet by Saturday night, when officers arrested a 28-year-old man on suspicion of the murder of former MP and Reform UK spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe, online commentary was already in overdrive. Commentators of all stripes fueled distrust of police strategies and narratives: why, they asked, did officers reiterate that a white man was initially arrested (and subsequently released)? Why wasn’t CCTV footage released? Had an arrest not been made so promptly, it would be easy to imagine levels of hysteria reminiscent of the Nicola Bulley case, who drowned after going missing in 2023.

Media strategies are important, but far from the only consideration for senior officers. It’s for police communications teams to balance assisting the SIO with the force’s reputational or PR concerns — and, quite rightly, comms teams tend to prioritize supporting detectives rather than feeding clickbait to the terminally online.

This isn’t to say that Devon and Cornwall Police has demonstrated a perfect media strategy in recent days. Could the force have explained its actions differently? Or should police rise above social media chatter? These are the challenges senior officers and communications teams face, especially in light of the post-Leveson era of relations between police and the press. Traditional media only has so much traction now, as “citizen journalists” increasingly establish themselves as go-to sources of information.

The SIO in the Widdecombe case finds themselves between a rock and a hard place. After the Southport riots in 2024, police were advised to err on the side of transparency when announcing a suspect’s ethnicity, which officers in this case did. As a result, Right-wing commentators claimed police were releasing such details only because the suspect was white.

Would it have been too difficult for the police to add a rationale to their statement? The problem here is that maximum transparency could have further fed the trolls. Then there’s the issue of CCTV, on which Devon and Cornwall’s response could have been more precise. Online skeptics might not be wildly interested in Code D of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which informs decision-making around identification evidence during investigations. Yet simply adding a link to the legislation would give malign commentators pause for thought — it occasionally feels as if police media teams fail to understand the unwritten rules of engagement behind online debate.

One area, though, where officers were correct was their decision not to discuss tactics. The general public aren’t entitled to a running commentary on police operations, not least because the suspect and any associates will be monitoring the media too. The force maintained today that there are no political or terrorist-related motives behind Widdecombe’s death. Nonetheless, as details emerge, the police will face new challenges. In the aftermath of the Henry Nowak case, officers’ legitimacy is in the doldrums. Only competence and transparency can solve this state of affairs, and those are two qualities conspicuously absent from many British police services.

Clearly, some people would relish the opportunity to exploit Widdecombe’s death, especially if the safety of populist politicians becomes a wider issue. Police forces, as currently constituted, are unprepared and unfunded for a campaign of political violence — or even to counter the specter of such a threat. Comms are therefore vital in combating misinformation. The Government, though, seems to favor blatant online interference as an answer. Tragically, politicians seem oblivious to how such a move would simply fuel grievances, ultimately causing more problems for hard-pressed officers.