Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced firearms officers will have their identities kept secret during criminal trials involving police shootings after an armed sergeant was found not guilty of murdering Chris Kaba.
Sergeant Martyn Blake was acquitted on Monday after shooting dead 24-year-old Mr Kaba in Streatham, south London, but has been forced to flee his home and go into hiding after gangsters put a £10,000 bounty on his head.
Senior former police officers have criticised the decision to charge him with the alleged offence while there has also been anger over his name being publicly identified ahead of the trial
Details of Mr Kaba’s criminal past could not be revealed until reporting restrictions were lifted on Tuesday.
In a statement to the Commons today, Ms Cooper told MPs: ‘When officers act in the most dangerous situations on behalf of the state it is vital that those officers and their families are not put in further danger during any subsequent legal proceedings.
Footage from bodyworn police cameras showed the moment 24-year-old Chris Kaba’s car was surrounded by armed police in Streatham, south London, on September 5 2022
Chris Kaba’s rap name was ‘Mad Itch’ or ‘Itch’ and he released drill rap songs bragging about gunning down rivals and selling drugs. A still from one of his videos is pictured above
CCTV footage captured the aftermath of Chris Kaba’s shooting attack on gang rival Brandon Malutshi, in Hackney, east London, six days before he himself was fired on by police
‘We will therefore introduce a presumption of anonymity for firearms officers subject to criminal trial following a police shooting in the course of their professional duties, up to the point of conviction.’
Mr Kaba’s death and the trial of the firearms officer which followed were held against ‘a backdrop of fallen community confidence in policing and the criminal justice system across the country’, according to the Home Secretary.
Ms Cooper told the Commons the Government would push ahead with ‘a package of reforms to rebuild confidence for police officers and for communities, to tackle the unacceptable delays and confusion in the system’.
She said this would include putting on a statutory footing for the Independent Office of Police Conduct’s victims’ right-to-review scheme.
She added: ‘We will align the threshold for the referral of police officers from the Independent Office of Police Conduct to the Crown Prosecution Service to that used by the police when referring cases involving a member of the public. Currently that threshold is lower for police officers and that is not justified.
‘We will allow the IOPC to send cases to the CPS where there is sufficient evidence to do so instead of having to wait for a final investigation report.
‘And we will put the IOPC victims’ right to review policy on a statutory footing to ensure there’s an appeal mechanism for bereaved families when a decision is made not to seek a charging decision.’
Senior for police officers had earlier today added to growing anger over the prosecution of 40-year-old Mr Blake and also how he could yet face the sack despite being acquitted.
Lord Blair, who was Scotland Yard chief commissioner between 2005 and 2008 said that if the sergeant had been convicted of murder, it would have been ‘difficult to imagine’ Scotland Yard continuing to deploy armed police.
Chris Kaba was shot through the windscreen of a car in South London on September 5, 2022 – armed police officer Martyn Blake was charged with his murder but acquitted this week
And Neil Basu, a former head of UK counter-terrorism, criticised the prospect of disciplinary proceedings that could still lose Mr Blake his job.
He also warned armed officers were saying they no longer want to carry their weapons for fear of facing similar prosecutions.
After Mr Blake’s acquittal at the Old Bailey, it was revealed this week that gangsters have put a £10,000 bounty on his head and the officer is having to live in hiding.
He had shot Mr Kaba, who was fleeing a police chase in an Audi Q8, to prevent him from running over other officers, the trial heard.
Mr Blake will be immediately reinstated to his job but will need to undergo refresher training before being deployed operationally.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct watchdog will decide whether he should face disciplinary proceedings.
In a letter to the Times today, Lord Blair wrote: ‘What I do not understand is why the prosecution for murder was brought.
‘Had the officer been convicted, it is difficult to imagine how the Met could have continued to deploy armed officers to deal with the type of difficult circumstances that unfolded that evening in Streatham.’
He described how the tactics used in the Streatham police operation would have been an ‘inline extraction’ – that is, ‘a highly organised stop involving a number of police cars containing armed officers, briefed and supervised by a senior officer and filmed from a police helicopter’.
Lord Blair added: ‘After the death, what needed to be tested were those tactics, not the actions of the individual officer, unless he had egregiously departed from his training, which does not appear to have been alleged.’
A fellow firearms officer who was at the scene on the night Mr Kaba died yesterday told Radio 4’s Today programme ‘at no point was there any evidence that (Mr Blake) had done anything wrong‘.
The former marksman called for police officers who take fatal shots to face court martial-style hearings rather than jury trials.
He added: ‘There’s a problem when police officers are scrutinised by people who don’t necessarily understand the pressures and the issues involved.’
And Mr Basu, a former assistant commissioner of the Met, this morning spoke of his misgivings about the case – as well as what he called the ‘second bite of the cherry’ which puts Mr Blake potentially facing a gross misconduct inquiry.
He told the Today programme this morning: ‘If a police officer acts unlawfully then, just like any other member of the public, then yes [they should be prosecuted].
‘But in circumstances where they have been asked to do their job, the hardest job in policing – to potentially put their life on offer or to take a life – and they are adhering to their training, no, they shouldn’t be prosecuted. That’s not an unlawful act.
‘There’s much more complexity to it than that and clearly lawyers have to look at the evidence, but I was surprised that the IOPC made such a quick decision to announce it as a murder inquiry.
Armed police had started tailing the vehicle that Mr Kaba was driving because the Audi Q8 had been used as a getaway car
Chris Kaba was one of London’s most feared gangsters with a shocking history of violence
‘I would want, as a former police officer, to know why that was made so swiftly, and I was surprised by the charging decision.
‘Now clearly there is a lack of faith in that decision. I know those prosecutors well. They’re normally very good, so I’m not second guessing they’ve done, but somebody probably needs to indicate the reason that decision was made.’
He also warned of potential knock-on effects on police morale, adding: ‘We’ve seen when the decision was made to charge, the reaction of armed police officers – some no longer wanting to carry weapons.
‘There is a very fine balance here about this criminal justice system to try and find some faith and confidence in the system on both sides.
‘But having a second process at a lower standard of proof, to try and find gross misconduct against an officer who has been acquitted and not seen to have acted unlawfully is going to appear to police officers as grossly unfair.
‘Neither side at this time seems to have faith in the criminal justice system. That is a serious problem for the Home Secretary, it’s a serious problem for the most serious police officer in the country and his colleagues.
‘An independent review of the decision-making in this system and how the process of holding the police to account works, that is open to both sides, would be incredibly important in this case.’
Current Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley is among the policing leaders to have called the current accountability system ‘broken’ and expressed concerns it might lead to a loss of morale among firearms officers.
Chris Kaba is seen sat inside an Audi Q8 in Streatham, South London, on September 5, 2022
A computer generated image issued by the Crown Prosecution Service of a reconstruction shown to the court at the Old Bailey of the position of two firearms officers in front of the Audi
Plans to give swifter decisions to suspended officers and more clarity to victims were among the changes touted by the previous government, while Tory ministers also considered raising the threshold for referring firearms officers for prosecution.
Speaking on the way to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa, Sir Keir told reporters: ‘We are going to pick that up and complete that accountability review because it is important that the public have confidence in the police including of course the armed police.’
The Prime Minister added: ‘It’s also important that the police know that we have confidence in them doing a very difficult job so we will pick that up.’
The Conservatives’ former Justice Secretary Alex Chalk today told LBC: ‘You cannot have a situation where decent, hardworking, conscientious police officers say, “You know what, I don’t want to serve as a police officer because there’s too much jeopardy that I’m going to be gripping the rail at the Old Bailey if something goes wrong and I do my reasonable best”.
‘As ever, the devil is in the detail. What you don’t want is to swing the pendulum so far the other way that the message goes out there on the streets of London that these guys have got a licence to kill. No one wants that, of course.’
Mr Kaba was unarmed when Mr Blake shot him through the windscreen of an Audi Q8 as he tried to ram his way past police cars on September 5 2022.
Former senior Metropolitan Police officers Lord Blair (left) and Neil Basu (right) have today criticised the decision to charge Martyn Blake, now acquitted, with Chris Basu’s murder
Forensics officers at the shooting scene in Streatham, South London, on September 6, 2022
Had he not been killed, Mr Kaba would have stood trial at the Old Bailey for the attempted murder of Brandon Malutshi who survived a nightclub shooting on August 30, 2022
But he was a ‘core member’ of one of London’s most dangerous criminal gangs and was allegedly directly linked to two shootings in the six days before he was shot dead by police, a court revealed to the public after lifting reporting restrictions.
In August 2020, Mr Kaba was jailed for five months for the possession of a knife and failing to stop.
Before that, he served a four-year prison term for possession of an imitation firearm for which he was convicted in December 2017.
An application for a gang order against Mr Kaba was also under way at the time of his death, the court was told.