Kennedy’s Southport account to MPs was centred on the events of 31 July.
Serena Kennedy told MPs she had stressed that the UK’s streets were “on fire” with violent disorder in the wake of three young girls being fatally stabbed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in the town on 29 July.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, was last month jailed for a minimum of 52 years for murdering Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine.
By that evening, prosecutors had said that Rudakubana could be charged with murders in Southport which led to riots inflamed by Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage, who tweeted fake news, leading to a new level of racism and Islamophobia in the country.
Kennedy’s Southport account to MPs
“By that time, we’d obviously had the disorder in Southport, and we’d seen, I think, three other cities experiencing disorder,” the police chief said.
“I wanted to try and give as much information as I could during [a] press conference … to help my colleagues around the country to try and deal with some of the misinformation and the disinformation.”
Kennedy said she suggested telling the media about the religious background of both the suspect and his parents.
Standard guidance
But she said the CPS’s area deputy chief told her not to depart from the standard guidance in which the police say little about a suspect on the eve of them appearing in court.
“We had about a 90-minute discussion all around the use of the wanting to put the religion in the statement,” said the Chief Constable.
“I won’t say my exact wording, but it will have been along the lines of, ‘I need to help my colleagues out, my fellow chief constables. Some of the streets of the UK are on fire, and I need to help them as much as I can.’
“But there were real concerns around me putting the religion into my press statement.
“It was very, very clear within that 90-minute conversation that the Crown Prosecution Service locally were very unhappy at our suggestion of including that.
“So based on that advice, we didn’t include the suspect’s religion in my press statement that I did at about midnight that evening.
“I’m subsequently aware that national CPS did email back into our Merseyside Police’s comms team at 23:30 BST to say that they were happy for us to include the religion.
“But we, by that time, were downstairs and preparing for the press conference so that actually wasn’t seen by ourselves.
“I was taking my direction from the deputy branch crown prosecutor, who was very clear that I couldn’t include that in my press release, which is why that wasn’t included.”
