Police officer cleared

[Toomanywars]

Martin Blake police officer today cleared by a jury of unlawful killing of Chris Kaba

Should police officers get more support. Perhaps not release name until after trial or inquiry.

He wasn't an imminent threat to life, he was stationary.

This is beyond ridiculous. I get we can’t all be mechanics but do you have no understanding of how cars work?

Where exactly on a car (other than the driver) would you suggest shooting to make it stop moving?

And are the firearms officers supposed to watch their colleagues be injured before the car grinds to a halt? Or would you rather they just tell everyone to duck and hope that there is nobody in the car that has been connected to a shooting who might decide to shoot back?

Why did he shoot him in the head? Couldn't he have fired at the car to stop it moving?

What part of a car would you shoot to stop it moving?

never ceases to amaze me how we can all watch the same video evidence and yet come to different conclusions. In my mind - and that of the jury - it is clearly the correct decision to acquit the defendant. And yet some people who watched the exact same clip believe the officer should have been found guilty.

It's a strange old world.

I have very strong opinions on this. I'm not surprised by the result. But I think he shot him too quickly.

I see the BBC refers to the fact he was shortly to become a father, but fails to mention a previous pregnancy that ended because he kicked his girlfriend of the time down the stairs. Both these details were irrelevant to the trial, of course.

That is horrific.

I'm afraid I'm
Finding it hard to have any sympathy for the victim. He only had to cooperate with the police.

😲

I sort of feel it would all be simpler and safer if the rules were more absolute.

As in “If we shout ‘armed police’ do as we ask immediately. If you do not we will assume you are armed and intend to shoot us first - and will shoot you”.

At the moment a person being pursued knows that the police are trained only to fire under certain conditions / last resort, but they don’t have the police pov or see what the police see, so will keep trying to escape until their own interpretation of ‘last resort’. Which is the dangerous grey area.

I don't know much about cars no, but can't you shoot the tyres? Otherwise shoot the driver in the arm or something. It's a question which I wouldn't be asking if I already knew the answer.

At the moment a person being pursued knows that the police are trained only to fire under certain conditions / last resort, but they don’t have the police pov or see what the police see, so will keep trying to escape until their own interpretation of ‘last resort’. Which is the dangerous grey area.

Dangerous largely to the non-compliant criminal, so... oh well.

The official policy says armed officers “shoot to incapacitate”, even though it is highly likely that this will kill. @username35890

They're just unequivocally wrong but have gone too far to admit it 🤷🏻‍♂️

They're googling something along the lines of "UK police shoot to kill policy" and going off the first page of Google results which are very old refs to something completely different 😅

Yes I am and have already read it. You said the police were trained to shoot people in the head and kill them. 'Reasonable force' is meant to be used and they're trained to hit the torso, not head. The Met does not have a shoot to kill policy and never has.

He was stationary because he’d just reversed after attempting to ram cars out of his way, and he was revving his engine suggesting he was going to have another go.

He was killed because he was assessed as being dangerous to life. You can pretend he was just sitting there waiting to be handcuffed all you like, but he wasn’t. You know it, we know it and a jury knows it.

They're not trained to shoot people in the head.

Great news, should never have been taken to court.

all cars can drive quite far and fast with flat tyres

and im not a trained firearms officer but Im sure that shooting a driver in the arm, through the window of a moving vehicle would take some doing - and even if done successfully it would not necessarily stop the vehicle

Sure.

Yes, or the officer who gets put on trial for murder, or gets shot because the suspect is actually armed and dangerous..

I don't know much about cars no, but can't you shoot the tyres? Otherwise shoot the driver in the arm or something. It's a question which I wouldn't be asking if I already knew the answer.

If a car is on an open road, driving away at speed, shooting the tyre might cause it to crash. However from stationary, cars can be driven for short distances on the rims so that wouldn't have stopped the risk of the car injuring or killing one of the police officers. And in an emergency situation, there clearly isn't the scope for one armed man to run round a revving car attempting to shoot all four tyres (assuming it wasn't pointless).

It's also quite hard to deliberately shoot a smaller target like an arm. In the dark, in an emergency situation, you might miss, or shoot them in the chest anyway. Also shooting someone in the arm would quite probably kill them or cause them to lose the arm.

Overall, if a situation is deemed that critical that a police officer shoots at someone, they need to stop them asap and the shot needs to do that - thus the head or torso.

The jury will have seen and heard much more than was reported in the press. I was present for a trial that was covered in detail in ‘live’ blogs, loads of video and photos published, accounts of expert witnesses etc. , but it was still only a tiny amount compared to what the jury saw, and in what detail.

Thé bit behind the wheel.