Chris Kaba shooting claims fuelled ‘dangerous narrative’, police chief says

Britain’s most senior police officer has accused “those in positions of authority” of fuelling “a dangerous narrative” about the shooting of a black Londoner Chris Kaba after he was stopped by officers in 2022.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said by focusing on Mr Kaba’s ethnicity, they had created “rumour and innuendo” which could “embolden those who work against the public”.

The Labour MPs Diane Abbott and Kim Johnson, and former Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, were among prominent people who raised concerns about potential police racism or called for “justice for Chris Kaba”.

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said the shooting had caused “anger, pain and fear” for black Londoners.

A charity, The Runnymede Trust, tweeted that “the legal system doesn’t deliver real justice for families bereaved by racist state violence”.

The tweet was taken down after a jury cleared a police firearms officer, Martyn Blake, of murdering Mr Kaba and an Old Bailey judge removed a restriction on reporting Mr Kaba’s criminal past.

Sir Mark’s comments came at an event hosted by the charity Crimestoppers, which provides confidential ways of giving the police information.

Discussing the erosion in trust in the police, he said: “Those in positions of authority need to pull in the same direction on trust. I think unfortunately too often this is just not the case. I think some people need to be more aware of the weight of their words.

“Their attitudes and actions can embolden those who work against the public.

“From the outset over the last two years, the majority of the conversation online focused entirely on Chris Kaba’s ethnicity.

“Rumour and innuendo fuelled a quite dangerous narrative about supposed facts that were detached from the evidence presented to court and the verdict delivered by 12 Londoners recently.”

He did not name them, but said “some people, with huge influence, risk undermining the British justice system, and those people should know better”.

Mr Kaba’s car was being followed by police in south London in September 2022, when it was stopped by Mr Blake and his colleagues. The car was driven backwards and forwards in an apparent attempt to escape.

Mr Blake fired a single shot, killing Mr Kaba. At his trial, Mr Blake said he had feared he or his colleagues could have been killed or injured by the way the car was being driven.

The shooting resulted in widespread comments online and protests.

Attending one of them, the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn said “we cannot live the pain felt by his family but we can support them in demanding #JusticeForChrisKaba”.

The rapper Stormzy also protested and was reported saying of the police “when these people do these things they get away with it”.

“What they’ve done is they’ve killed someone. We can’t sugarcoat it.”

In an article, MP Diane Abbott wrote that Mr Kaba had suffered a “terrible fate”.

“People can even lose their lives when going about their daily lives.”

She said the case related to the “wider treatment of black people and other ethnic groups in this country”.

The Old Bailey jury heard that while Mr Kaba was unarmed, and Mr Blake gave evidence that he could see the driver was a “comparatively young and athletic” black man, police did not know who was at the wheel, and the car had been linked to a previous incident.

They later disclosed video evidence that Mr Kaba had shot a rival in an incident days before he was stopped and killed by police.

The Met said Mr Kaba was a leading member of the 67 gang, active in south London.

While news organisations, including the BBC, knew about his background, for legal reasons they were unable to report it until after the verdict.

In the Commons, the Labour MP Kim Johnson claimed the media were using “racist gang tropes to justify his killing”.

But in his speech Sir Mark said Mr Kaba was part of an extensive gang in Lambeth, south London, which “coerces and exploits black boys and draws them into gangs and crime”.

“They’re amongst the sort of 10 or so most active gangs in London,” he said, and involved in 11 shootings over the last year,

He argued that most of the discussion online had focused not on the issues at the centre of the case – whether a police officer was legally justified in firing the fatal shot, given the situation – but on whether the police were racist.

He said “that’s not to say that there’s not a national conversation to be had about disproportionality in the justice system”.

“We have a decade of data that tells us that young black men in London are 13 times more likely to be murdered than their white counterparts.”

He said this should provide a national outcry in the same way that the police were criticised for policing Covid-19.

“Trust in policing will be helped by an honest conversation about the risks facing different communities and a collective effort to give everyone equal chance of thriving in London and not be drawn into criminality.”

But following Mr Kaba’s case, he backed demands for police firearms officers facing serious criminal charges to be given anonymity.

In response, Ms Abbott tweeted that Sir Mark was supposed to have been the “new broom” at the Met, but instead of offering a “new beginning” he had continued to support a “lack of police accountability”.

In his speech Sir Mark said the case had so affected officers they were “more concerned about legal jeopardy than they are about physical jeopardy”.