By Rob Hay
President of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents
The verdict in the trial of Sergeant Martyn Blake for the murder of Chris Kaba has generated much discussion.
Even here in Scotland, the outcome was anxiously awaited – in particular by police firearms officers.
The ramifications of the prosecution and outcome will be felt UK-wide.
I represent the senior operational leaders in policing in Scotland, including those who command armed policing operations and lead the firearms officers who volunteer for a challenging role.
I know my members have been following the trial with professional interest and more than a little concern.
It is abundantly clear that justice has been done by the jury delivering a not guilty verdict.
With the caveat that I have only heard the elements of evidence that have been widely reported, what is less clear is how on earth the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) arrived at the view that there was sufficient evidence to try Sgt Blake with murder in the first place?
Other than the bare fact of Chris Kaba’s death, no evidence was led that supported a conclusion that his death was pre-meditated murder.
Bodycam footage of the incident clearly illustrates the jeopardy the officers faced performing the stop on the vehicle.
An Audi Q8 is a performance vehicle, with a kerb-side weight of over 2,100kg and could travel at over 25 MPH while accelerating hard in first gear.
The impact on a human body of being struck by such a vehicle in these circumstances would be catastrophic and likely fatal.
“It is abundantly clear that justice has been done by the jury delivering a not guilty verdict”
It is just over six years since PC Andrew Harper of Thames Valley Police was dragged to his death by a driver fleeing justice.
The testimony of other firearms officers in attendance averred that they, too, felt under lethal threat and were split seconds away from opening fire.
The prosecution simply had no evidence to suggest anything other than Blake, acting in an honestly held belief of a lethal risk to the lives of his colleagues, reacted exactly as he had been trained to, in a manner that was necessary and proportionate in the circumstances.
As a result of the evidence led, it took the jury a mere three hours to reach their decision.
This evidence was available to the CPS throughout, the woeful weakness of the prosecution case apparent, so why did the prosecution happen?
Frank Ferguson, head of the CPS special crime and counter terrorism division, provided a statement so template in nature, it could have been written by AI.
Mr Ferguson says, “…it is our responsibility to put cases before a jury that meet our test for prosecution, and we are satisfied that test was met in this case…”
However, we, the general public, are not privy to their working out in the margin.
I can theorise a far simpler explanation… cowardice. A craven cowardice of leadership.
Fearing rioting and disorder of the kind in the wake of the death of Mark Duggan in 2011, and recognising poor relationships between the Metropolitan Police and sections of the community, the CPS were quite happy to abrogate their responsibility onto a jury of Martyn Blake’s peers.
Whatever transpired thereafter would be off their conscience and have no impact on their ‘corporate reputation’.
If decisions about prosecutions are decided, not on the weight of evidence, but on the extant nature of community relations at any given time, this should worry you.
That’s not how the law is supposed to work. Such decisions should be taken “without fear or favour”.
“Kaba was a violent and dangerous man, who posed an ongoing risk to the public”
To compound this muddled-thinking, information about Chris Kaba has now been released.
A six-times convicted career criminal, with a history of violent offending and a prime suspect in a shooting days before his death and extensive links to drug dealing.
Kaba was a violent and dangerous man, who posed an ongoing risk to the public.
Despite these facts, somehow a narrative has been allowed to take root that police officers are in some way more of a threat to the community than the criminals who terrorise and target children to join organised gangs. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
Kaba’s death is inherently tragic, but the fact remains that Kaba was an ongoing, grave risk to the public, not just from his own violent actions, but in the propensity of such gang-type offending to draw others in, perpetuating a cycle of misery and violence.
The same commentators – and some politicians – who decry policing for not effectively tackling this offending, offer nothing but a wall of silence when men like Kaba bring violence and tragedy to their neighbourhoods.
Far easier to instead indulge in “police bashing” that has become fashionable, regardless of the human cost.
What of Sgt Martyn Blake and the men and women like him, who volunteer for a difficult and dangerous job?
Our authorised firearms officers are amongst the most highly trained in the world with rigorous selection, training, re-training and ongoing assessments. They are absolutely necessary to protect the public and critical national assets.
They are now left questioning if volunteering to carry a firearm is worth it, if the stress upon them, their families, the threats to their lives and a broader lack of appreciation and support from the public are too great a burden.
This, too, should worry us all.
Firearms officers are absolutely necessary to protect the public.
The numbers of police officers who carry firearms on duty is a tiny proportion of the workforce, and the authorised deployment to declared firearms incidents vanishingly small in comparison to the millions of incidents attended by police in the UK.
But there is no surer a route to a fully armed police service in the UK than the collapse of a model predicated on willing volunteers.
Those volunteers do not deserve politically-motivated show-trials; they do deserve our deep gratitude.
Without them, who is going to protect us from men like Chris Kaba?