The police watchdog has launched has a homicide investigation into the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba by Metropolitan Police officers. According to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) their investigation into the killing has ‘entered a new phase’.
‘Mr Kaba died after a single shot was fired by an MPS officer from the specialist firearms command while police attempted to stop and contain the vehicle he was driving,’ the IOPC said. This followed the activation of an automatic number plate recognition camera which indicated the vehicle was linked to a firearms incident in previous days. The vehicle Mr Kaba was driving was not registered to him.’ The IOPC said its investigation team was continuing to review ‘a large amount of evidence’ however ‘as this is now a criminal investigation, we are limited in what further information we can provide’. ‘The launch of a criminal investigation does not mean that criminal charges will necessarily follow,’ it added.
It was reported that a large crowd gathered outside the Met’s headquarters in protest. Speakers included Streatham MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Hackney MP Diane Abbott and Stormzy who called on campaigners to ‘have the stamina to keep going because what they have done is they have killed someone’. ’It could have been a brother, it could have been your uncle, it could have been a nephew,’ he added. Lester Holloway, the editor of UK black newspaper the Voice (as reported in the Guardian), said: ‘I’ve had a lifetime of going on these marches. The struggle for justice seems never-ending. But we need to, as a community, keep the pressure on, because otherwise there will be no change.’
