THE Justice Secretary has called for people to respect a verdict clearing a police officer who killed an unarmed man after protests.
Metropolitan Police firearms officer Martyn Blake fatally shot Chris Kaba in London in 2022 and was on Monday acquitted of murder after a trial at the Old Bailey.
Kaba’s family led a protest outside the court in central London on Monday evening where speakers demanded “justice” for the late 24-year-old.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood (below) called for “everybody” to respect the jury’s unanimous verdict, which was delivered after just three hours of deliberation.
She told BBC Breakfast: “A verdict has been given. I think that has to be respected by everybody.
“People will have their own views about that verdict but there’s clearly work that we have to do to rebuild confidence amongst the police and firearms officers and also within our communities as well.
“And I’m sure the Home Secretary will be saying more about that in the coming days.”
Asked if she agreed with Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick that the police officer was a “hero”, Mahmood said: “I think that the job that firearms officers do is very, very difficult, and we do ask those officers and others in national security roles, you know, to take the most difficult decisions to keep all of us safe.”
“And I do think that the issues that have been thrown up by this trial… will require a response.”
Following the verdict, the Met released bodycam footage which showed the moments before Kaba’s death. Police had been alerted to stop his car which had been linked with a shooting the previous evening.
Kaba attempted to escape by driving his car backwards and forwards into the police cars, which Blake – who has been reinstated at the Met – said made him fear for his colleagues’ lives.
Blake insisted he had fired in an attempt to “incapacitate” Kaba, who was at this point hunched low over his steering wheel. He was killed by a single bullet to the head.
During the trial, relatives including the 24-year-old’s parents Helen Lumuanganu and Prosper Kaba sat through more than two weeks of painstaking analysis of their son’s death, including footage from multiple different body-worn and car cameras.
Kaba’s cousin told protesters who gathered outside the Old Bailey that his mother had held back her emotions for days on end during the trial.
She said that at the start of the case her auntie started “shaking uncontrollably” and crying when footage was shown.
In an effort to curb potential unrest, the police have successfully been granted permission to reveal details of Kaba’s criminal past.
An application by Kaba’s mother to keep the details under wraps until the conclusion of any future inquest into her son’s death was rejected.
In a letter to the court, the had argued that “open and transparent public disclosure” of Kaba’s criminal activities, including the attempted murder of a gangland rival in a nightclub, would “significantly reduce the risk of unrest on the streets of London and keep the public safe”.
Rank and file officers in the Met are understood to “remain astonished” that criminal charges against Blake were brought, with Met boss Mark Rowley declaring the system that holds police marksmen to account to be broken.
On the day Blake was charged, at least 70 firearms officers threatened to refuse armed duties and Rowley has since said the system for investigating fatal shootings by the police was “broken”.
A firearms officer who spoke to the BBC Today programme on Tuesday morning on the condition of anonymity called for the current way of investigating officers who kill suspects in the line of duty to be replaced with something “akin to the court-martial system that we see in the military”.
He said this would involve “a panel of legal experts, a panel of subject-matter experts who can call on witnesses from the incident itself, can call on further witnesses in a particular area to bring their expertise to bear”.
