https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66875035
Firstly and primarily, one awaits all the details and hopes justice takes its proper course.
In the meantime, his family and various various hangers-on & local politicians bleating on about what a wonderful guy he was with such a bright future is getting grating. It's alleged he was an active member of a conspiracy to murder someone, the car he was driving being used (I believe) as the getaway vehicle in a pre-meditated shooting the day before. His alleged co-conspirators are all in prison and go to trial in November. If the allegations based on the available evidence are true, he was in fact a highly dangerous violent thug.
That is of course no justification for killing him. However, the suggestion is that when he was boxed in by the police, there was 'contact'. If you have a look at the photo in the BBC article you can clearly see the scrape damage on the white car, and the position of the police car. The shot was taken directly in front of him. If he saw the gap between the two cars and tried to escape by forcing his way through, and a cop was standing in the gap, then it's clearly arguably reasonable to have shot him in the way it appears was done, on the grounds he was using the car as a weapon.
Now I don't necessarily think that charging the cop is wrong even if all those circumstances are true. A court case allows all the evidence to be examined and a proper decision taken as to was that really the right thing to do in all the circumstances, perhaps he should have simply got out of the way (if he could). But currently this absurd narrative that it was a racially motivated murder of an innocent unarmed man is allowed to play unopposed, and I don't think that is right, or just, or helps anyone, particularly if the cop is eventually aquitted.
Better shot of the relative position of the vehicles in this article:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12539403/Met-police-murder-sho…
The BBC said he was driving a car "That did not belong to him", that's new language for, it was stolen.
Yes, the reporting seems to be turning him into some sort of martyr.
"a promising footballer"
I'd love it if one day the family just came out and said "he was a complete scrote who should have been locked up years ago but we loved him".
Not that I'm saying that we should look across the pond for guidance of how to police but if a US rozzer had been standing in front of a car forcing its way between other cars and that car had been used in a firearms incident the previous day, they wouldn't even consider this an "awful but lawful" just "lawful" shooting. "If" of course....
Everyone dead was a smashing person, loved their family, liked by everybody, good as gold with a bright future. Except Jimmy Savile and Adolf Hitler.
Buzz they would also have emptied several hundred rounds into the car making it much harder to prove who actually fired the fatal shot.
I hear Fred West was a really good builder and his friends really loved and respected him.
A judge said to Ted Bundy he was a lovely intelligent young man and would've made a good lawyer...
Dr Harold Shipman had a great bedside manner by all accounts.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66906193
So now there's a down-tools amongst a minority of armed police. Unfortunately, without any counterpoint to the Kaba camp's narrative and openness about the detail of the actual circumstances of the shooting, its impossible to know whether the protest is reasonable or not.
It doesn’t matter if it’s reasonable. They clearly feel undermined and unsupported, possibly for reasons that have not been made public. The presumption that every criminal shot by the police was somehow unlucky is at fault. Criminals should be more scared of the police not less.
Nah, the Met are out of control, a gang unto themselves with the protection of the law and rightist rhetoric at their back, and Kaba whether he’d done some other naughty sh1t or not was an entirely innocent fall guy in this incident. defund the police
heh @ the sub sixth form satire on this thread
the reality is that anyone who has the misfortune to be iced by our thugs in uniform is deemed fair game by the british Right for this sort of posthumous assault on their character
Bodycam footage shows Kaba driving the car at the officer with the firearm aimed at him.
After several shouts for Kaba to surrender, the officer reacted to protect his own life.
So there we are.
Let's see what a jury makes of the evidence, like grown-ups, shall we?
If the car was stolen and involved in a firearms incident earlier, and he had previous for a firearms offence and if he drove his car at officers then why don’t the press say that.
why say the car wasn’t his - and print the nonsense that the police didn’t know he was a convict with a history of firearms offences because he was driving a stolen car at the time - if that’s actually the facts. Surely these facts are known.
why pussyfoot around the facts ? Maybe that’s irrelevant to the officer that pulled the trigger but potentially add into the mix the fact that the car is stolen, and was involved in a firearms related incident it probably changes your view on the danger you’re in, if for example the car is driven towards you after being ordered to stop.
it’s all speculation of course because it appears that publishing the facts isn’t a thing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Chris_Kaba
BBC NEWS:
”he was driving someone else’s car”
rightio
Read the wiki page - if that’s the truth then I can’t see how the cps can make out a case for murder and the police are right to back the officer.
an officer genuinely concerned primarily to protect himself would have jumped out the way. A dead foot doesn’t lift itself off the accelerator.
It would appear the evidence hasn’t been released / which would presumably show how much ramming / endangering was being done. That evidence (from body cams and witnesses) appears not to be available at the moment
this is an interesting perspective
https://thecritic.co.uk/chris-kaba-and-the-rush-to-judgement/
“an officer genuinely concerned primarily to protect himself would have jumped out the way. A dead foot doesn’t lift itself off the accelerator.”
So you’re saying he deliberately put himself at risk just to have a chance at shooting the black guy?
Always good to judge to a nicety the actions of someone with a stolen car being driven at them.
Excellent and well-balanced article Parsnip.
I don't think I have seen a single comment above or elsewhere on what presumably will be there in the evidence bundle, namely the evidence from an expert in police gun handling on what protocols exist for when it is legitimate to shoot to kill, eg whether the yardstick is an immediate threat to life.
The family backed off somewhat when they saw the bodycam footage.
The CPS presumably felt an aspect of this expert evidence warrants the conclusion that there is a more than 50% chance of conviction. If that evidence ever became public this would be called a cover up had no trial ensued.
What sort of society do we want.
A society where hoodlums with gun convictions are ignored and un-monitored, or one where a highly trained firearm officer fractionally oversteps the mark by perceiving a threat to his life that another expert officer did not.
That's what juries are for.
By the sounds of it, it will incredibly easy to find a significant number of officers to give expert defence evidence.
Is there a line of coppers telling non crim lawyers how to do their jobs? ‘I really don’t see how you couldn’t have negotiated that warranty to my satisfaction. The company failed. Millions of public money was squandered. Go to jail’. Ffs the internet.
When someone cites a news source that you've not heard of on RoF, where the take is interesting
always check the wiki...
Do you disagree with the article then Jelly? Not at all interested in the publication, just the words.
Not read it. The publication is important. If Fascist Prick Monthly is on your side, it's a good time to consider if you're the baddie. Plus I don't give them the eyeball asld revenue. Same for Heil.
If it's as clear cut as you think, then he's bound to be found NG. But I've got a Jean Charles de Menezez in a bulky coat degree of skepticism when it comes to the Met and disinformation following a shooting.
The article doesn't say it's clear cut. Far from it.
The article essentially just says we don't know what happened so let's not pre judge. Which seems entirely reasonable to me even if it does publish articles by right wing contributors.
Correct - it says the one bit of evidence that would perhaps allow you to fall one side or another is not available - and as such those asking for the shooting to be condemned are as much of a problem as those proclaiming that it was reasonable. The chat of witnesses seeing kaba’s deliberate ramming is only reported rather than in anything official. That’s the evidence that will no doubt be presented at trial
in the meantime those calling this a racist killing are part of the problem
Jelly - Julie Bindel (wife of Jean Charles de Menezez‘ solicitor and a feminist writer) is also a contributor to The Critic.
And Joshua Rosenberg isn’t right wing at all
The Critic is a monthly British political and cultural magazine.[3] Contributors include David Starkey, Joshua Rozenberg, Peter Hitchens and Toby Young.[3]
The magazine was founded in November 2019,[4] with Michael Mosbacher, former editor of Standpoint, and Christopher Montgomery, a strategist with the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs,[5] as co-editors. It was funded by Jeremy Hosking, a Conservative party donor[6] who had previously donated to Standpoint.[7]
Reception
Mosbacher described The Critic as competing with Standpoint. Mosbacher said that Hosking had been unwilling to fund Standpoint without more of "the culture wars content" that interested him, but Standpoint's board resisted this direction.[6] The Times Literary Supplement described The Critic as having a resemblance to The Spectator, with a mission "to criticize the critics".[8] Ian Burrell of The Drum called The Critic a "contrarian conservative magazine".[6]
In his essay wishing success for the new publication, David Goodhart, founder of Prospect, remarked "Does the world need another magazine of tastefully written… conservatively inclined thinking? Probably not."[3] Peter Wilby of the New Statesman responded "I would say probably yes, so why do we never get one?"
Dear Ms Solicitor
Our client: Millie Tant Your client: J. Hosking
Thank you for your email of yesterday which I haven’t read because I know I don’t agree with you.
Jelly
weird fact : Jeremy Hosking is known for bankrolling Laurence Fox, but he also gave 10k to the Lib Dems to fight the SNP in Skye.
God that must make ian blackford even more annoying to look at
bump
Norman Lebrecht writes for the Critic. A pillar of the remain supporting London liberal establishment. It’s in a similar category to the Speccie.
...let's look at what would have happened across the pond.
Apart from pointing out - Sybil Fawlty's Mastermind special subject, the bleeding obvious - that driving a car that doesn't belong to you is not the same thing as driving a stolen car, Ihave no comment.
Two different comments but Joshua Rosenberg's wife is the very right-wing Melanie Phillips, so is that not as relevant in his case as Julie Bindel's wife is as regards her politics.
I'm not exactly known as one of ROF's bleeding heart liberals but The Critic is a hard-on white British right-wing love fest full of late middle aged white British people some of whom have quite racialised and anti-minority ethnic views, e.g. Starkey and Goodhart. It's quite different from say The Spectator which is right-wing but no way racist and quite positive about immigrants and those from ethnic minorities.
spousal affiliations irrelevant technically but usually some sort of overlap… didn’t know Rosenberg was married to Mel P. I suppose Julie B has sold her soul then? I always thought the right had her down as loony left?
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