Cop did job
THE only injustice in the Chris Kaba case is the two-year hounding of the cop who took his life.
His attempted prosecution for murder without credible evidence.
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And the £10,000 bounty now placed on his head by malicious criminals.
The grief of Kaba’s family is powerful and understandable. But it must not conceal the truth. He was a violent, gun-toting gangster with a grim record. He was apparently involved in two shootings in the week before he died.
His supporters claim he was unarmed when he was killed. Except he was trying to ram a police roadblock in an Audi Q8, a two-ton lethal weapon, posing an imminent threat to life. Sergeant Martyn Blake opened fire to stop him.
After a two-year probe and three-week trial the jury unanimously cleared him in three hours. Not because Kaba “did not matter”. Because Blake was innocent.
What possessed the Independent Office for Police Conduct and CPS to pursue this obviously flimsy case?
And did they never consider its effect on armed police morale?
Every day these officers go to work knowing they may need to place themselves in extreme danger to protect the rest of us from terrorists or gangsters.
How many want to volunteer now, seeing what Sgt Blake is going through?
No, of course they are not above the law. But a balance must be struck, and common sense applied, when a killing is clearly justifiable.
The IOPC must end its own probe today.
Public safety relies on cops like Sgt Blake — and plenty more.
Pay & dismay
WHO could have predicted it?
Giving the public sector inflation-busting pay rises the moment Labour got into power has led to us borrowing £6.7billion more this year than planned.
This was Labour’s choice, though they claim it was an inevitability the Tories failed to plan for, leaving them a “black hole”.
A hole which Rachel Reeves says must be filled by tax rises in the Budget.
Growth remains Labour’s mission.
How will the Chancellor ever achieve it with the nation buckling under a heavier tax burden than in the bleak 1970s?
Road rage
EVEN if Labour are braced for unpopularity from taking “difficult decisions”, they should steel themselves for next week.
Many of the ideas floated for the Budget would cause uproar. But among the very worst is the possible scrapping of the fuel duty freeze that The Sun’s campaign has kept in place for 14 years.
The petition from 130,000 angry drivers handed to No10 yesterday represents a tiny fraction of those likely never to forget Labour hiking their petrol and diesel after paying off militant unions.
Rule it out, Rachel.
