Women's Equality Party and Chris Kaba

We don't live in the same world, unfortunately. In your world, the police do their jobs properly without discrimination.

In mine, they've been found time and again to be racist and prejudicial. In your world, the criminal justice system gets all the baddies and there are no miscarriages of justice.

In my world, unfortunately there have been many miscarriages of justice and juries have been known to be wrong.

My priorities are about racism in the Met and extra judicial killings; of the police acting outside the law. I believe it should be taken seriously. Your world sounds a lot nicer, no one does bad things.

To whom do they ask questions then?

Jurors can ask questions but they can't ask directly.

Ever since the news about this verdict broke, I've been thinking of something that happened within sight of our house earlier this year. I didn't see it but others locally did and talked about it, and I saw the aftermath. A police car was in pursuit of another car. The driver of the car being pursued saw that his way ahead was blocked so he slammed on the brakes and reversed into the police car. He then accelerated and swerved onto the pavement and made his escape that way. By very good luck there were no pedestrians there. There easily could have been as this happened in school term-time at a time when children and teenagers are making their way home. The speeds involved may not have been what they would have been on a motorway, but the police car that got rammed was written off and had to be removed by a tow truck. People who care about the safety of others don't start ramming cars around them and moving back and forwards when a police officer tells them to stop.

Reading through Kaba's extensive criminal record (thanks for the share token to the Times article linked upthread) it's clear that by his own choice he lived in a world where his chance of being killed or seriously injured was high. Given that his associates in the night club shooting are all now behind bars, he almost certainly would have been too. There'd have been little wasted sympathy for him then.

Sad, but true, MrsOvertons

I suppose if women aren't a priority to a political party like the misnamed WEP (and there's countless examples of how they prioritise men's interests) then it's a small step to defending a man who targets women, as evidenced in that article.

He was driving a high spec car known to be linked to several shootings.
He failed to stop despite a police pursuit.
He was told, loudly, and he clearly hears it, armed police, show your hands, show your hands.
It's in the body cam footage.
If he had done that then he'd still be alive.
But he didn't.
Instead he chose to drive forward and shunted again into a police vehicle in an attempt to escape.
Then he was shot.

12 jurors said that this was not murder after weeks of viewing all the evidence and footage. It took them less than 6 hours to reach that decision.

So I'll respect their conclusion and maintain my contempt for those trying to make that lowlife woman beating violent criminal a hero

Exactly. If anything, they should be highlighting the harm he caused to women - and how women are impacted by gangs and violent and coercive male criminals. That's the only justification I could see for the WEP getting involved.

@username1589 you’re right. This racist police officer clearly went to work that morning with the intention of finding a black man driving a car so that he could shoot him in the head. That’s what all police officers hope to do, even those who are also black,

Ultimately, no one should get shot and killed, even those who have beaten their pregnant girlfriend or shot others themselves. Fortunately we have a pretty robust criminal justice system in this country, and yesterday justice was served.
If you disagree, then maybe start campaigning for the total ban on firearms within the police service. Your attack against the verdict here says a lot about where your priorities lie.

Good point, well made.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/21/what-we-now-know-about-the-13-seconds-before-chris-kaba-was-shot
"The marked BMW car, in which Blake was sitting, was waiting in Kirkstall Gardens, a residential road in Streatham, as a police helicopter hovered overhead.
A white Tesla was parked on the left-hand side of the road, with a blue van parked on the other. As the Audi turned in, Blake’s BMW pulled in between the two civilian vehicles, creating a block at the front of the Audi.
Behind Kaba’s car, creating a rear block, was an unmarked police Volvo. It came to a halt, close to the Audi, but not tight enough to stop it reversing.
For the first part of the standoff, the Audi first smashed into the BMW and the parked Tesla, trying and failing to ram through."

Sure sounds like he drove into civilian vehicles. But that's not what matters - the point is that he was using the vehicle as a weapon, and was therefore demonstrably not "unarmed".

jurors don’t question defendants

He didn't ram into civilian vehicles, he was in a police block. He was surrounded by police vehicles and he tried to ram his way out of the police block.

In fact he was able to manoeuvre the car because the block wasn't tight enough around him.

I'm not denying that he should have stopped, I'm arguing that shooting him in the head was wrong.

The reason given for opening fire was because there was an imminent threat to life. Yet the officer could not point out when or to whom.

I haven't read the court transcripts so happy to accept that you are correct and that at the time he was shot the vehicle was stationary. The fact remains that very shortly before that he was ramming into police and civilian vehicles with the Audi, so he wasn't unarmed (which was my first post) - he was armed with a vehicle as a weapon, and he was using it.

It's not me who is being obtuse. I understand there was a marker on the car as it was alleged to have been involved in a firearms incident previously.

However:

At the time of the incident the police did not know that Kaba was in the car or his criminal history. It was therefore deemed irrelevant to the trial as it did not play a part in the incident.

“No one is defending or campaigning for Kaba”

There are a lot of people - mostly women sadly - doing precisely that in these videos

https://twitter.com/LeoKearse/status/1848702433880318273?refsrc=twsrc%5Etfw%22%3EOctober

You are just being obtuse. Well done I suppose? Takes something to double down in the face of facts. Weird that you want it to be true that our police officers go round murdering people.

The link explains what happened. It explains there was a firearms marker on the car and the background and that officers would have known such a car posed a threat to the public as would likely have been being driven by someone connected to a shooting. As in: pieces of intelligence they used to assess the risk to the public and what to do about it.

They performed a stop and from the pictures, it seems they did so at the best location possible - a side street. They did their level best to protect the public.

Even the hard of thinking among us deserve decent officers who do their level best to keep us safe from violence.

That's not correct. That information is from before he stood in front of the car which you can see in the footage is stationary. He heard a car moving at speed, yet it wasn't.

In fact the jury asked him why he shot him considering he was blocked in and stationary at the time.

Whilst there was a media blackout on his history, I knew of his previous time in prison and the restraining order against him by his pregnant girlfriend. If I knew that, the WEP definitely knew that and that they shouldn't have used him as a figurehead. It would be like the NSPCC campaigning about the so-called injustices faced by celebrities convicted of child sex crimes.

TBH the WEP sound like Stonewall, putting the rights of others above the rights of LGB people, in this case putting the rights of violent men above that of women.

From the Guardian, "For those seconds he was repositioning himself, he could not see what was playing out, but said he heard revving of the engines, tyre screeches and the Audi moving at “great” speed. It was no more than 12mph, the prosecution said."

Both the police and the prosecution agree that the vehicle was not stationary.

He was sitting in the car not doing anything at the time he was shot. Look at the footage again, his car was not moving.

He was trying to ram his way out of a police block. His car was blocked in by police cars.

At the time he was shot his car was stationary and he was blocked in by the police.

He wasn't unarmed. He was armed with a three ton Audi which he drove directly at the police.

Where does it say that they knew who was in the car and his criminal history?