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.

Also this is what can happen
Just a trailing loop that he stepped in and he was killed trying to stop criminals

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46544144.amp

I think its right that the situation will be further investigated. I have sympathy for the officer having to make a difficult split-second decision but it wasn't without risk and potential disastrous consequences. Surely if you shoot at someone driving a car at speed then there's a risk that the driver will lose control of the car while it's still moving at speed and plough into your colleagues or members of the public? What if he'd missed and the bullet went through the car and hit another officer or bystander?

Just to add, according to reports this was the first time in all of the time he has been a firearms officer, that this officer has discharged a firearm. So he's probably attended umpteen incidents, has brought his firearm out and never discharged it before. The incidents before have, presumably, been brought to an end by compliance on the part of the subject. On this occasion Kaba decided not to comply.

The bloody government needs investigating to ensure police are protected from doing their jobs. Like the army, they should not be named for doing their jobs.

And sadiq khan needs to be sacked. No surprise with his press release but wtf….

So sad

A young police officer killed because criminals would do anything to escape capture. The animals laughed after leaving a previous court hearing.

This is absolutely nonsensical. Of course there is risk any time a firearm is deployed. It's the officers job to weigh up that risk. That is their expertise. That is the risk they are train to assess and mitigate as appropriate. Consider this. If that man was positioned with his car, several tones of metal which was involved in a shooting the evening before, directly in front of your child or loved one, using it as a battering ram and refusing to comply with instructions, what would you want the officer to do? For me, it would be to do whatever was possible to reduce the risk. All other options a had failed. So a bullet in the head to stop him wouldn't cause me to lose a minutes sleep.

I agree. The man is a stain on London and is utterly lacking in integrity.

This week launches a toolkit to reduce violence against women and girls and on the same breath is an apologist for this scumbag.

SK often posts before facts are known, he posts things he know will create divide- I don't know how in his position it's permitted. I get that he has communities he wants to advocate for and give a voice to, but he's supposed to represent all of London and the public sector workers within it too.

Wow. Not a great role model for a dad. Of course the papers, defence etc will try to paint him as a sweet, law abiding loving dad to be 😂

In reality an ex con, thug who was named in a shooting a few days before and this delightful episode with a previous pregnancy

Seriously?

What a fucking prince.

The family are naturally upset at his death. However, they fail to see what character he was. They fail to expect him to actually be accountable for his own actions. He wasn't a nice character, ex prison, involved in previous shooting with other members of his group, yet here they are poor Chris it's because he's black. It's not it's because he made lots of wrong choices in his brief life.

Yes idiots and people determined that no matter what he did or does, he was killed due to his colour not his actions. There are always people who make excuses for thugs. There will be other youngsters at these gatherings of how hard done by he was that will look up to these thugs and end up like them. They won't learn lessons at all.

@username35890 I though the coverage on the pm programme on R4 at about 5.40 yesterday was fair. A senior police firearms officer (himself a man of colour) explained that last year 6 people were killed in tens of thousands of incidents where firearms teams were deployed and two of these were Police officers. The sample is too small to draw inferences about racist motives. As others have said it's not only black people who have been shot by the Police.
Evan Davies got to the nub of the argument - is it more likely that a trigger will be pulled if the suspect is black, in identical circumstances. There's no ready answer but it is clear that many people believe this.
In this case the state did all it could to apply the highest standards of justice to this incident (some say too high) and a jury did not convict.
Whatever anyone here says the officer should or shouldn't have done, a jury, in possession of all the known facts, acquitted him.
It's a tragedy for Chris, who now has no chance of redemption. I cannot imagine the heartbreak of his family, whose comments after the verdict were grief speaking rather than cold light of day reason.
And the police officer who never set out to kill anyone that day, doing a job the vast majority of the public would not be brave enough to do.
No winners.

Anyone thinking a car can’t be a lethal weapon might want to have a read of this:

https://www.connexionfrance.com/news/gendarmes-widow-frances-lax-approach-killed-my-husband/675719

There’s been more than one police death in France over recent years due to drivers refusing to stop when ordered to do so.

All risks that these offers have to weigh up in a second or two.

But what do you think the alternative is?

Perhaps police officers let thugs escape when they refuse to stop and show their hands. More police officers injured or killed. Let thugs do what they want. Gangs run areas, let the fluffy little men get on with it, they're doing a grand job.

Perhaps families can try to keep their family members from looking up to 'heroes' like CK otherwise they might make the same poor choices.

The officer has never shot anyone before. He didn't set out to shoot CK that day. He and his family have suffered too. If people didn't make continuous poor choices they wouldn't end up in situations like CK did.

I haven’t listened to this case much but hearing the officer talk about whether the case should have happened on R4 this morning he made compelling points

username35890 · Yesterday 19:51
We've all seen the evidence. The CCTV evidence and the police evidence, it's been shown on the news and in the media.

We’ve all seen the evidence as shared in the media .

We haven’t seen / heard all the evidence produced in court.

The trial I attended in full, there was loads of content, highly relevant material full of nuance and context, that wasn’t covered by the media. The point of journalists is to distill things from weeks worth of material.

I agree 100%. I cheered when I heard the verdict.

@Toomanywars

The CPS studied the evidence and believed it was sufficient for a murder charge.

During the trial, the jury asked Blake why he needed to shoot Kaba since the car was stationary and he was blocked in.

Blake said he hadn't wanted to kill him but he thought a threat to life was imminent. Blake made a lot of exaggerated statements such as the car was moving at speed and he thought Kaba would hit someone.

Blake did not say in court that Kaba was revving the engine. What he said was that while he was repositioning himself, he could not see what was happening but he heard revving engines, tyre screeches and a vehicle moving at great speed.

Blake claimed officers were in danger of being run over or dragged under the Audi, but he could not point out in extensive video footage which officers’ lives he feared for.

We all know that the Met has been found to be institutionally racist.

Since 2005 four unarmed men have been killed by the police, all black. Tony Long who killed Azelle Rodney was charged with murder, Blake who killed Kaba was charged with murder and I believe they want to charge the killer of Jermaine Baker.

While it's quite cute that people have so much trust in the Met, Wayne Couzens was a trained firearms officer. David Carrick was found guilty of 85 offences of which 71 were sexual.Hussain Chehab abused children as did Farhan Ghadiali and so it goes on. It seems as though everyday police officers are being charged with heinous crimes.

In a recent report the Met was found to be institutionally racist, homophobic and misogynist. Yet people are clapping and cheering over an unarmed man being shot in the head.

He's been accused of all sorts of absolute crap and people are making cruel comments about his devastated family.

Since 2005 four unarmed men have been killed by the police, all black.

They we're all men as well.

The jury aren't being asked what I am asking. I appreciate the jury found the police offer not guilty. Of murder. Fine. I expected that. But that still doesn't mean he should be dead. Its unusual for such a police officer to even be bought to court. I'm glad it was. The case doesn't sit well with me at all. I think the question shouldn't have been was it murder, its more subtle than that.

The right decision. We ask these police officers to make split second decisions, and the guy was driving his car at them.

People sitting comfortable afterwards, can’t possibly say the police should have done this or that.🤷‍♀️