Kisakye Busuulwa
On the morning of the 12th of August 2011, Londoners awoke to the smell of smoke. The streets were filled with carcasses of what used to be cars. Shop windows were smashed; their contents having been looted the night before. The palpable feeling of chaos remained in the air, hanging patiently like a bat waiting for the night to return.
the city was set ablaze every night for almost a week
As history would have it, the night of the 11th of August 2011 would be the last of six nights of rioting across the streets of London. These riots were the direct response of the Black community of the city to the killing of Mark Duggan by the Met police, a local black man of the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham. Following his killing at the hands of the Met Police, the city was set ablaze every night for almost a week. After the killing of Chris Kaba, and the subsequent murder trial resulting in the acquittal of the officer who shot him, understandably fears arose that a repeat could befall the city again.
After realising that he was being followed, Chris Kaba told a friend over the phone, ‘I think there is police behind me.’ Police were indeed behind him, as they believed that the Audi Q8 that he was driving had been involved in a firearms incident in South London the night before.
As he turned into a residential road, Chris Kaba’s Audi Q8 had found itself surrounded. He had unknowingly found himself in the centre of a police operation in its ‘containment phase’. With an unmarked police Volvo blocking him at the rear of his Audi, Kaba came to a stop. However, despite remaining stationary, his tyres continued to screech with shrieks of desperation.
the containment phase was not yet complete.
Speaking to the Guardian, an anonymous serving firearms commander stated that at this point his force would’ve waited until Kaba’s car had been tightly contained before officers left their cars, stating that in his view the containment phase was not yet complete.
Nevertheless, in this situation, the police did not totally secure the suspect’s car before leaving their vehicles. Defence barrister Patrick Gibbs KC later told the court that Kaba’s Audi had ‘far more room to manoeuvre than was safe.’
Following this, commands of ‘strike’ and ‘doors, doors, doors’ rang out on police radio as armed officers approached and surrounded the Audi shouting ‘show me your f******* hands’. Some officers then tried to break the car’s windows in an attempt to remove Kaba from the vehicle.
During the initial phase of the confrontation, the Audi hit a marked BMW car and then a parked Tesla in a failed attempt to ram through. Officer Martyn Blake had been sat in the marked BMW, patiently waiting in Kirkstall Gardens, a residential road in Streatham.
Seeing the Audi’s failure to escape, Blake ran from the car, initially around the side, before aiming his rifle after taking a position protected by the side of the police BMW.
Blake claimed not to see what was happening during the seconds he took repositioning himself, but said that he heard engines revving, tyres screeching, and the Audi moving at ‘great’ speed. The prosecution would later challenge this claim by stating that Kaba’s vehicle was moving at no more than 12mph.
With this being the first British police shooting that led to a murder trial caught on video, with a series of cameras worn by police and in their cars, the prosecution had ample footage to rely on.
Despite stating that he became “filled with dread” that the suspect would use the vehicle as a weapon, and that he ‘thought one or more of [his] colleagues was about to die’, when provided with extensive footage Blake could not point out specifically which officers’ lives he feared for.
When asked why he fired his weapon, when his colleagues on the scene did not, Blake stated that he ‘thought [he] was the only person with effective firearms cover at the time.’
The entire ordeal, from the initial police stop of the Audi Q8 to Officer Martyn Blake firing a single bullet through the windscreen and into Kaba’s head, lasted no more than 13 seconds.
Under English law, the use of force by the police needs to be proportionate, and reasonable and the belief it is necessary needs to be honestly held. Ultimately, this grants the police no greater protections than the ordinary subject when using force, and it is for the prosecution to prove that none of the above criteria apply to the case.
the last murder trial of an armed officer in the UK.
The Guardian reports that since 2005, four men who were unarmed at the point they faced armed police have been shot dead by the Met in non-terrorist operations. All four of them were black. The earliest of these, the killing of Azelle Rodney in 2005, led to the last murder trial of an armed officer in the UK.
In all four cases, according to the Guardian, the officer’s account contained inaccuracies.
Regardless of this fact, just like Met officer Tony Long who, in 2015, was acquitted after the killing of Azelle Rodney in 2005, Martyn Blake was this week acquitted of the killing of Chris Kaba.
This verdict has led to mixed responses online.
One user posted the following:
Another asked, ‘Why are people trying to defend Chris Kaba? Have I missed something or are we now allowed to ram police and take law into our own hands?’
However, there was by no means a consensus online as others have responded with concerns about ‘the risk the ruling poses to everyone’s civil liberties.’
Following the trial, CCTV footage came out of Chris Kaba allegedly shooting a man in a nightclub in Hackney days before he was killed by Martyn Blake.
Public focus quickly shifted from his killing by the police under controversial circumstances, to his criminal past, with conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick stating that ‘London is safer without Chris Kaba.’
Responding to the storm online that this caused, one user posted the following to X, ‘Chris Kaba was a violent criminal & he was murdered in a blatantly unlawful manner. You can defend his right to life and push back against government tyranny without upholding the criminality he was into.’
Kisakye Busuulwa
Featured image courtesy of Krzysztof Hepner via Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
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