“For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword". That warning from Jesus, recounted in St Matthew’s Gospel, followed his betrayal by Judas. The son of God’s message is clear - a person who lives violently faces a violent death.
So it was when vicious criminal Chris Kaba met his end. So, last week’s court verdict that cleared police officer Martyn Blake of murdering Kaba in September 2022 is just and welcome.
Few of us will ever know what it is like to live in the shoes of Sgt Blake who, after Kaba rammed his car into police vehicles, was forced to make a split-second decision to shoot him to save innocent lives. Yet, shockingly, following the incident, brave Martyn Blake was suspended from duty and, worse still, tried for murder.
It took just three hours for a jury to clear him – a common sense outcome which demonstrates, beyond doubt, that the case should never have taken place at all.
The verdict was delivered before reporting restrictions were lifted, which revealed the full extent to which Kaba had been at the rotten core of London’s organised crime, with a string of violent offences to his name. His drug trafficking gang was heavily armed, and linked to multiple murders, shootings and stabbings. Indeed, terrifying CCTV footage shows Kaba shooting a man in a nightclub just days previously, before he then chased his victim down the street, firing more bullets.
It is unsurprising that the extremists of Black Lives Matter chose to champion violent Kaba, dishonestly portraying him as a ‘martyr’. Some might be more surprised – though I was not - by the Runnymede Trust charity which described Kaba as a “victim of racist state violence”. It is not clear whether this divisive diatribe was borne of simple-minded delusion or militant deviance, regardless of which, my colleague Robert Jenrick MP is right that their charitable status should now be withdrawn.
The deranged militancy of Kaba’s advocates reveals the huge gulf between how ordinary people perceive truth and how fanatical militant activists and their bourgeois liberal apologists see it.
It is clear that Sgt Blake and his family should not have been put through the trauma of facing a murder charge, for, as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner acknowledged, Mr Blake has paid a huge personal and professional sacrifice for a "a split-second decision on what he believed was necessary to protect his colleagues and to protect London".
Lessons must be learned from this awful affair. Which is why in Parliament last week I called for a rethink of the way that the Criminal Prosecution Service and the Independent Office for Police Conduct deal with such cases. They must change rapidly if they are to escape from the guilt-ridden prejudice that is undermining their credibility. It is obvious that firearms officers accused of shooting a criminal should be afforded anonymity during any subsequent hearing - because Martyn Blake was denied this, he and his family are said to be in hiding for fear of armed criminals.
The police are not, of course, above the law – but as they do dangerous jobs for us all, putting themselves between violent criminals and their likely victims, they deserve unwavering support. The criminal justice system must prioritise defending the law-abiding majority from a wicked, criminal minority, rather than pandering to liberal, doubt-fuelled virtue-signalling. That Kaba perished by the sword was the fateful price of his wickedness. No one should mourn him.
