The Death of Chris Kaba?
The death of Chris Kaba on 5th September by being shot by a policeman has rightly aroused serious concern. Alongside the grief of his immediate family it also raises serious issues about the state of relationships between the police and black people. But the answers to those questions are not simple. In this blog I want to contrast three issues to try and clarify thinking about the state of those relationships.
1. We are right to experience grief and offer sympathy
BUT not at the cost of moral distortion.
As a young black man Chris Kaba will have experienced racism. His family may well have experienced violence and fear in the disorders and fighting in Congo, with its earlier experience of the harsh and arrogant brutality of King Leopold’s colonial regime. For family members hoping to achieve a more prosperous and settled future in Britain, and it appears often succeeding in doing so, his death is an unwelcome reminder of violence and the unpredictable use of force by those in power. More widely, it is one more distressing case of unwelcome, negative attention to the black population.
It is right for leaders in politics, in the church, in local communities to give voice to and share in that distress. Understandably his family will want to highlight his personal strengths. But whilst ‘not speaking ill of the dead’ requires a certain restraint, the converse of exaggerating positives and eliding negatives seriously distorts reality, especially when it implies the killing of a blameless man by the police.
Chris Kaba had previously been convicted of a firearms offence. He had served time in prison. It is said he was driving a car which the previous day had been linked to a firearms incident. You would not know any of this from the on-line ‘Demand Justice for Chris Kaba’ petition which only tells us that ‘He was studying to be an architect, and at such a young age had already been a rising star within the music industry’. It made no mention of his criminal record, nor that several members of the rap group ‘67’ of which he was a member have criminal records. (It is also quaint to see 24 as a ‘young age’ for a rapper).
More widely there have been several moving references to the fact that he was about to become a father, but few to the fact that there was a restraint order against him seeing the child’s mother. Given his history, wondering about what sort of fathering his child might have received is not unfair..
2. The police need to be held to account over racism
BUT not by over-playing racial victimhood.
The responsibility for Chris Kaba’s death is being investigated by the IOPC. The wider case for accusing the Metropolitan Police of racism is strong, with high profile incidents breaking surface, such as the hand-cuffing of the athlete Bianca Williams over a driving issue. The disgusting circulation by policemen of photographs of the murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman has elements of racial disdain as well as contempt for everyday standards of dignity and decency. As regards the circumstances of Chris’s death, in the past the Police have lied shamelessly in the immediate aftermath of deaths – over Charles de Menezes by falsely lying that he was a credible terrorist as they claimed he wore a bulky jacket and leaped over the ticket barrier at Stockwell; over Mark Duggan with the immediate informal police story was that a bullet he fired fortuitously ricocheted off a policeman’s radio. It is not impossible that thorough investigation will reveal that Chris’s behaviour immediately before the shooting was less violent than alleged or his previous history less blemished. But at this stage both sides deserve the benefit of the doubt. How restrained should a police officer be when he credibly fears that his life is in danger? Are those fears at some level augmented when facing a black person? The conviction of the police officer responsible for the death of Dalian Atkinson suggests it is possible. Clear answers to such questions are not easily come by.
But answering these questions is not helped by lazily feeding this story into a narrative of police abuse of black people. When MPs such as Diane Abbott comment that ‘it seems like the Met is still shooting and killing unarmed black people”, or Bell Ribeiro-Addy say that ‘This is not the first time a Black man has been shot by the police. We know that. So why are they not changing their behaviour?’ they are irresponsibly implying that the police action was racist and unjust without any attempt to look at the evidence. Playing to the victimhood narrative that Chris Kaba’s death certainly indicates police racism serves nobody apart for their desire for short-term credibility. In the year 2020-21, according to police statistics, there was one fatal shooting – a white person, and of deaths during or following police contact 17 were white and 2 black.
Take this sentence which on present information is true: ‘known criminal killed by police whilst violently resisting arrest’. How much more meaning would be added to that sentence by including the word ‘black’?Quite possibly some, either because the policeman in question at some level was hostile to black people, or because he was less confident in negotiating a possibly peaceful outcome than if faced by a white man. But we don’t know, and nor perhaps will the IOPC enquiry be able to shed further light. For black young people in areas where contacts with the police can too often be abrasive or worse rushing to the assumption that the word ‘black’ adds meaning to the sentence is understandable. For politicians and others to confirm that distrust without evidence is shallow politics.
3. We want safety for young black men
BUT we shouldn’t ignore a bigger danger.
I went to the shops on Saturday morning and found part of the centre of Tottenham cordoned off as a crime scene investigation following the murder of 19 year old Kane Moses the previous evening. A week before a clergy friend in Tottenham has taken the funeral of a man who had been twice run over and stabbed – his family so traumatised by his mutilation that they were numbly detached from the proceedings. Ben Sixsmith lists three British rappers who have been murdered this year. The moral darkness of Chris’s world should not be underestimated. Possible accusations of ‘judgementalism’ should not inhibit leaders in the church or local communities or politics from saying that Chris was involved in a seriously dysfunctional pattern of life.
The proper scrutiny of the police’s relationship with black people should not over-rule the fact that for a fourteen-year-old black boy the greatest threat to his future well-being, and indeed survival, comes not from the police but from other people, frequently black, who are involved in crime and drug dealing. Such criminals do not have strong local support (contrary to the wildly inaccurate racist depiction of popular support for Mark Duggan in ‘Exodus’ by the Oxford academic Paul Collier). It is significant that following his shooting by the police, after the criminally inspired violence and looting that erupted a few days later, there was very little further in the way of protest by people of any ethnicity over Duggan’s death and the police’s responsibility, despite the fact that there are still very serious unanswered questions concerning the police’s role.
Quite simply, criminal behaviour is a curse for the whole community, not least for black people. The deaths of people involved in criminal behaviour are a tragedy for their families and friends, and grievous for those who identify with them, but it is a mistake to project grief over those deaths or anger with the police onto a broader canvas with the belief that this represents a ‘community’ response. It doesn’t. Murders, such as last Friday’s in Tottenham, have a widespread, diffused depressing impact.
The persistence of crime – from small time, ‘soft drug’ dealing to murder – is a more deep-seated and serious harm to urban communities than racism in the police force. When black young people respond to that racism by closing ranks and refusing to pass on information to the police (or feeling intimated not to do so) it is counter-productive to the long-term benefit of those areas.
Conclusion.
In the USA in response to the BLM claim to ‘defund the police’ (repeated by some at the protest for ‘Justice for Chris Kaba’), polling has found that urban black communities actually want more police. I believe it is similar in Britain. I think of someone who ran a youth club on an estate with a history of violence who had to close the club because the police could not provide officers to ensure that attendees would not be the victims of postcode attacks. Feeling unprotected in areas with a serious degree of violence is a depressing consequence arising from under-resourced policing.
But it is essential that those police are both trained and scrutinised to eliminate racist assumptions and behaviour. Numbers also matter here – the more the police are stretched and have fewer personal contacts with communities the more easily can racist attitudes in the police accumulate.
Accordingly, confidence in each other needs to grow on both sides. Initiatives such as the recent webinar on ‘The Churches’ engagement with the Police on critical incidents’ organised by the Racial Justice Advocacy Forum provides a vital opportunity to develop good practice in relating to both alienated groups and the police. By contrast, the knee-jerk condemnation of the police by the people mentioned above and too many others, where particular officers are assumed to be guilty of racist violence without due process simply strengthens the police’s distrust of the public and of politicians. It helps consolidate their own grievance narrative of being under paid, under supported and over stretched. There is a danger that the death of Chris Kaba intensifies hostility between these two conflicting narratives of victimisation, with resulting damage to public order and well-being in areas where such benefits are badly needed.
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‘Introduction to Muted Group Theory’ is a stimulating on-line lecture by a Gujerati Christian, Usha Reifsneider, on the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies web-site. (I declare an interest having spent thirty years of ministry in Alperton, the Gujerati capital of Europe). ‘Muted Group Theory’ is concerned with how certain groups are not heard of themselves but spoken for or about by others. Her concern is how authentic Gujerati Christian voices may be able to express themselves.