Overview

• Serena Kennedy says she faced thousands of vile, gendered online attacks after the Southport murders, describing the abuse of senior women as uniquely personal and vicious.
• She rejects claims of two-tier policing and says the Southport disorder involved violence targeting a mosque with no legitimate protest element.
• Kennedy says she sought to release the suspect’s religion at charge to counter false narratives but was advised against it by local prosecutors, while in a separate Liverpool case the force named a white British suspect to dispel rumors.
• She welcomes new national guidance from the NPCC and College of Policing on sharing suspects’ ethnicity and nationality, stressing the need for transparency when criteria are met.
• Calling Reform UK’s push to scrap equality policies ludicrous, she rebukes rhetoric including from Nigel Farage as misinformation-fueled and harmful to public confidence and officer morale, and she retires with Rob Carden taking over on 1 September.