A former police marksman has criticised the “flawed” Independent Office for Police Conduct following the acquittal of Sergeant Martyn Blake, who was cleared of murdering 24-year-old Chris Kaba.
After a trial at the Old Bailey, the jury found Blake “not guilty” of murdering Kaba after the gang member was shot in the head during an armed vehicle stop in Streatham in September 2022.
Despite the ruling, IOPC director Amanda Rowe acknowledged Kaba’s “family and friends” by offering “thoughts and sympathies to them and everyone else who has been affected”.
Rowe added: “We also recognise the impact that this trial has had on the officer involved, as well as his firearms colleagues and the wider policing community.”
Former police marksman Tony Long has criticised the IOPC following the trial of Martyn Blake
PA / GB News
Slamming the response to Blake’s trial and the treatment he has received by the IOPC and the Crown Prosecution Service, former police marksman Tony Long claimed the process has been “flawed”.
Reflecting on his own trial, which impacted “10 years” of his life, Long told GB News that no matter what level of force they use on offenders, they will be “scrutinised”.
Long explained: “You’re trying to do a job. I think that’s the big issue with with everything that’s going on, it’s not a case of scrutiny. Every police officer expects that if they use force of any degree, even if I was to arrest you for shoplifting, I’m obliged to lay hands on you. That’s a way of formally arresting you, I’m effectively taking away your liberty.
“So even putting your hands on somebody, let alone spraying them, hitting them with a baton, using a taser, or using a firearm, it’s all a use of force. And we all know from being a probationary constable right the way through your 33 years of service that you have to justify that use of force on every occasion.”
Protests took place outside the Old Bailey following the verdict of Chris Kaba’s trialPADefending Blake’s actions, Long added that it is “what officers are trained to do”, but the “automatic reference point is a criminal prosecution”.
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Long said: “If you’re trained in the worst case scenario to shoot at another human being and that’s what you’re trained to do. So you begin to wonder whether it’s worth taking that risk, you know, for your family’s sake.”
Recalling his own trial following an incident in 1985, Long told GB News host Nigel Farage that despite being cleared of murder, the trial caused him to “lose his job” at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Long recounted: “I shot someone on the last day of April 1985. I should have retired in the August, but I was investigated through to the November where I was cleared. Then the Crown Prosecution Service had to look at it for another six months.
“I lost the job with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that I’d been recruited for, and had to stay in the police for a further three years.”
Offering his thoughts on the IOPC following his trial as well as Blake’s, Long claimed that the organisation is “flawed”.
Tony Long says the IOPC is a ‘flawed organisation’
GB News
Long stated: “I don’t think you’ll find many police officers of any rank, including the commissioner from his statement this morning, that would tell you anything other than that we believe that the IOPC is a flawed organisation.”
Offering his thoughts on the trial of Blake, Farage admitted he was “disgusted” by the CPS for naming Blake and putting him through “two years of hell”.
Farage fumed: “My sympathy is just enormous – the man’s been through two years of hell, and his family, and yet both of those bodies, in their statements today say that they have great sympathy for the family of Chris Kaba.
“They respect the result of the jury and basically have nothing to say at all. Misplaced sympathy. I think the whole thing is quite disgusting, frankly.”