On 21 October, the police officer Sergeant Martyn Blake was acquitted of the murder of Chris Kaba at the Central Criminal Court. Blake had been charged after taking part in a firearms operation in Streatham on 5 September 2022. The police pursued an Audi Q8, which had been linked to a gun offence the previous evening. They did not know the identity of the person driving the vehicle. When Kaba resisted arrest and rammed cars blocking him, Blake discharged his Sig Sauer MCX 5.56 rifle. Kaba was killed by a shot to the head. In reaching their unanimous verdict, the jury reportedly took only three hours to deliberate.

At the time of Kaba’s death, there was a strong reaction against the police, which concentrated on Kaba’s race. There were several protests in the aftermath. One Black Lives Matter march, where protesters declared the police were “murderers” was attended by the parliamentarians Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Harriet Harman, Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott.  In an opinion article for The Guardian, Al Sharpton framed the shooting in a narrative of police oppression against black people in the UK and the US. Kaba’s family wanted the case to be investigated by the UN Human Rights Office as an example of racist brutality. The charity Inquest submitted a report on their behalf.

The verdict itself, the law and the evidence presented at trial, refute many of these arguments. Blake claimed that he was acting in self-defence and in defence of others. Once those defences were properly raised, it would have fallen to the prosecution to disprove them. In order to rely on those defences, a defendant should demonstrate: (1) that a belief in the circumstances as he understood them meant that it was reasonable or necessary to use force and (2) that the force used was proportionate to the threat faced as he understood it. Even if mistaken, a defendant may rely on the defence if the belief in the circumstances was genuinely held. The proportionality of the use of force in those particular circumstances is, however, assessed objectively. Importantly, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, section 76(7) provides the following regarding the use of force:

(a) that a person acting for a legitimate purpose may not be able to weigh to a nicety the exact measure of any necessary action; and

(b) that evidence of a person’s having only done what the person honestly and instinctively thought was necessary for a legitimate purpose constitutes strong evidence that only reasonable action was taken by that person for that purpose.

Thus, a defendant is given latitude if a purpose is legitimate, since it would be unreasonable to expect a “with luxury of hindsight” approach. This applies as much to members of the public as it does to police officers.

Blake’s case was that the Audi Q8 being pursued had been linked to a shotgun incident near a Brixton primary school the previous evening. A witness on 4 September 2022 had described the sound of shots being fired. Another witness saw four men wearing balaclavas, one of whom had a large shotgun in his trousers, exit one vehicle and then drive away in two separate vehicles. In the former vehicle, the police found shotgun cartridges. The number plate of one of the latter vehicles helped locate the Audi. Against this background, the police reasonably understood that the driver of the Audi had the potential to be dangerous.

Driving the Audi the next day, Kaba was followed by police vehicles. In a phone call to a friend, he said that he thought that the police were behind him. Kaba was boxed in by the police on Kirkstall Gardens in Streatham. A marked BMW was in front of Kaba’s Audi and three further vehicles were behind it. Two parked vehicles were on either side of the road. The armed officers pointed guns at Kaba and told him to show his hands. Instead, Kaba rammed the BMW and a parked Tesla in an attempt to break free. Kaba then reversed towards Blake’s colleagues. It was at this point that Blake, standing in front of the Audi, discharged his weapon. In explaining his decision to use force, Blake said that:

The male had already shown a propensity to use violence and was happy to use any means to escape and I had a genuine-held belief that one or many of my colleagues could be killed by the car, and that the driver would not stop his attempt to escape at any cost.

Another officer, giving evidence, supported Blake’s account, saying that, “At the time, I was very concerned I was going to be hit by the Audi”. According to Blake, he was not aware that a police car had further boxed in Kaba before Kaba started reversing the Audi. The jury would take this subjective understanding into account.

Following Blake’s account, the evidence from footage, and the evidence from the other officer, it is clear why the jury reached its verdict. First, the link between the Audi and a weapon offence shows why firearms officers were present. Further, with Kaba’s conduct of ramming the car, Blake genuinely believed that he needed to protect himself and his colleagues. The evidence from another officer supported Blake’s defence, since it showed that Blake’s belief was reasonable and therefore more likely to be genuinely held. While the police vehicle behind had boxed in the Audi, Blake was not aware of this. A discussion of what Blake might have done better fails to recognise the nature of the defence, which takes into account the defendant’s subjective understanding of the circumstances. Second, given that officers are required to make judgements about the use of force in a short window of time, and that it is not possible to weigh to a nicety the exact use of force that marks necessary action, the force was proportionate in the circumstances as Blake understood them. His use of force stopped a vehicle he believed would cause serious injury.

Even since the acquittal, radical voices continue to claim that this is an injustice and that the Metropolitan Police are racist. Perhaps the most egregious was The Runnymede Trust. In a now deleted post on X (formerly Twitter), the Trust said that “this lack of accountability perpetuates cycles of violence and impunity”. It asserted that “the legal system doesn’t real justice for families bereaved by racist state violence,” adding the statistic that “since 1990 there have been 1,904 deaths in or following police custody or contact”. Blake, of course, was accountable. He had been investigated, charged and then acquitted following a trial. The Trust was using a statistic without assessing whether a defence could apply. Moreover, the statistic itself was misleading. “Following police contact” does not mean that there is a causal relationship between the police and the death. As Neil O’Brien explained, the statistics include cases where police are called to attend a domestic incident which leads to a fatality or where death is self-inflicted. These statistics are not exclusively chronicling incidents of police violence, then, let alone disproportionate force leading to death.

In these cases, there appears to be an unwillingness to look at the evidence rationally, understanding the difficulties that officers face

After the end of the trial, the judge released further information about Kaba. Kaba was a member of a South London gang named 67. A few days before he died, Kaba had reportedly entered the Oval Space nightclub in Hackney and shot a rival in the leg. This information had not been left to the jury as it would not have been known to Blake at the time of Kaba’s death. It would not, therefore, have been relevant to the issues in the trial. However, it does show that Kaba was not mistakenly followed on the evening of his death and that he was an objectively dangerous person. Labour MP Kim Johnson dismissed Kaba’s involvement in serious violence as “racist gang tropes” without considering whether it was pertinent to these wider issues.

In these cases, there appears to be an unwillingness to look at the evidence rationally, understanding the difficulties that officers face, and the necessary role that they play. Despite the allegations of activists, Blake was, indeed, accountable. The law and evidence was ultimately in his favour. That explains the relatively short jury deliberations.

The case may at least lead to some legal reform. First, the Home Secretary has suggested that there will be a presumption of anonymity for officers when charged. In the present case, a judge made the decision to make Blake’s name publicly available because of open justice considerations. As a consequence, Blake reportedly faced threats from Kaba’s gang, with a bounty on his head. This may have been avoided had Blake remained anonymous. Second, the Home Secretary has rightly proposed a review of the threshold at which the Independent Office for Police Conduct will refer these cases to the CPS. Last year, firearms officers went on strike due to concerns that the authorities are too ready to pursue them for using force. Officers, they said, did not feel confident that they would be properly supported. This lack of confidence may ultimately put the public at risk, if firearms officers are hesitant to willingly place themselves in scenarios where force may be necessary. Reform is, therefore, welcome.