Earlier this week, the police officer who shot and killed Chris Kaba was cleared of murder charges. For those unfamiliar with the incident: On September 5th 2022, Kaba was driving a vehicle that was linked to a shooting incident the day before, and was being followed by police. His car was stopped at a police road block and he was ordered to exit the vehicle. Kaba refused to do so, ramming two police cars in an attempt to escape. He was then shot dead by police officer Martyn Blake.
When the judge in the Kaba case finally lifted reporting restrictions yesterday, it was revealed that Kaba was a member of a notorious drug gang, and that he had shot another man in a nightclub the day before his death. However, neither these revelations nor the acquittal of officer Blake (by a unanimous verdict) has stopped Left-wing activists from blaming Kaba’s death on “racism”.
In relation to the incident, the Runnymede Trust posted a tweet claiming, “The legal system doesn’t deliver real justice for families bereaved by racist state violence” and “this lack of police accountability perpetuates cycles of violence and impunity.”
Likewise, the website Counterfire published an article claiming that “the reality of institutional racism is laid bare” and “this case is a reminder of the structural and institutional racism in this country”.
Even the supposedly respectable Guardian published an editorial noting that “since 2005, the Met has shot and killed four unarmed men in non-terrorist operations. All were Black”. The editorial went on to quote a report by Inquest, which referred to “deeply rooted patterns of racial disproportionality resulting in deaths after the lethal use of force”.
The problem with claims of “racist state violence”, “institutional racism” and “racial disproportionality” is that they don’t stand up to scrutiny.
To begin with, “killings of unarmed men in non-terrorist operations” is a rather arbitrary category. Why exclude terrorist operations? In any case, four data points isn’t much evidence to build a case on. And doesn’t the fact that only four unarmed men have been killed in almost 20 years suggest a remarkable degree of restraint on the part of the Met?
According to the Washington Post, 516 unarmed men have been killed by U.S. police since 2015. Adjusting for population (of the U.S. versus Greater London) and number of years (nine versus 19), this means the rate at which unarmed men are killed by police is more than seven times higher in the U.S. than it is in Greater London.
As a matter of fact, the overrepresentation of black people among the victims of police killings can be entirely explained by their higher rates of involvement in violent crime.
The Inquest report quoted by the Guardian found that, from 2012-13 to 2020-21, there were 119 deaths “in or following policy custody” or “following police contact”, and that 23 of the victims, or 19%, were black. Since black people are only 4% of the population (less if you average over the relevant time period), they are substantially overrepresented. If you use homicides as a benchmark, however, they aren’t overrepresented. From 2014 to 2020, black people comprised 18% of homicide suspects.
Homicides is clearly a more appropriate benchmark than population. Around 90% of the victims of police killings are men. Yet we don’t attribute their overrepresentation to “sexism” because we know that men commit the vast majority of violent crime and hence are much more likely to get into situations where a police officer ends up killing them.
The verdict in the trial of officer Blake suggests that Kaba was killed in lawful self-defence. And there’s no evidence that police are disproportionately killing black people due to racism.
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