I'm a Met Police marksman...the public are ungrateful about what we do

To the jury in Martyn Blake's murder trial, Chris Kaba was described as an excited father-to-be and building site worker shot dead after being cornered by armed police.

In fact he was a 'core member' of London's notorious '67' gang, directly linked to two gun attacks in six days and driving a luxury Audi spotted at the scene of a shooting 24 hours before he died.

Mr Kaba's parents insist that their son had been a 'good boy' denied justice at the Old Bailey on Monday, where protests took place afterwards. 

Fellow rapper Wretch 32 has claimed Kaba was 'assassinated' and 'executed' by an officer, adding that the police are 'good at villainising a person'.

While members of South London's black communities have said people should look beyond his criminal past and that the decision to clear Sgt Blake in just three hours has left them traumatised, insisting it was another racist killing in the capital.

But one of Sgt Blake's colleagues told MailOnline today that he would have taken exactly the same decision to shoot 23-year-old Kaba in September 2022.

'It is exceptionally sad what has happened', he said, but added: 'I believe that he [Kaba] wouldn't have thought twice about killing one of my colleagues'.

Here, in his own words, the marksman describes what would have been going through Martyn Blake's mind as he fired the fatal shot - and how serving officers view the left-wing politicians who he claims were hellbent on getting Sgt Blake jailed.

Amid claims that race played a part in the shooting, he says: 'In the case of Chris Kaba, the officers involved don't know who's driving that car. The driver could be white, black, male, female, you don't know'.

Below the expert marksmen reveals while he and his colleagues feel betrayed by the investigation into Martyn Blake. 

I was with friends in a restaurant when the news that Martyn Blake had been cleared flashed up on my phone. All the police group chats kicked in.

It was a relief - but there was also a sense of 'here we go'. It wasn't the result Chris Kaba's family, activists and some political figures had wanted.

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I wondered: Are we now going to have riots and even more anti-police rhetoric? Will the truth about Kaba come out - or will the facts just get drowned out by people angry because it didn't suit their agenda?

The truth for some people is just too hard to deal with.

If you're asking me honestly, absolutely, I would have shot Chris Kaba in that situation.

We need to get away from whether he was carrying a firearm or a knife. It is totally irrelevant because his weapon was the vehicle.

I believe that he [Kaba] wouldn't have thought twice about killing one of my colleagues. None whatsoever. I mean, this is a guy who discharged a weapon in a nightclub.

He's not a man who was operating within any confines of the law. But Martyn Blake had to operate within the confines of the law. That's what sets them apart.

If he was armed, I'm sure those officers would have been in a firefight, because he would have thought nothing of engaging police officers with a firearm.

But he tried to ram his way out and if that results in running over and killing a police officer, or indeed running over and killing a member of the public, then you take the shot. I would have done it.

This is the scenario that all police officers have faced. But you're damned if you do, damned if you don't. You can't win.

If you shoot him like Sgt Blake did. You're damned.

If he hadn't taken the shot and Kaba carried on down the road and killed some little old lady. You're damned.

You can only make a decision on what you see in front of you.

All you had is the information that the car was involved in a firearms incident the night before and you're trying to stop this car, and this car is now trying to get away from you.

You have to make the decision. Once that trigger is pulled, the world stops spinning to a certain extent, and everybody starts looking back.

Lots of critics are saying: 'Right well we knew this, and we knew that' But Martyn didn't know that Chris Kaba was at the wheel of that vehicle. He didn't know who the driver was. He just had to make a very difficult decision.

Kaba's mindset as a hardened criminal adds weight to the situation those officers found themselves facing.

Sgt Blake was 'betrayed' when he was put in the dock

Martyn Blake will feel betrayed because he was just asked, as a Metropolitan Police officer, to go and deal with something.

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At the time Scotland Yard was again being accused of being institutionally racist and a young black man was then killed on the streets of London by a firearms officer.

Sergeant Blake was offered up like a sacrificial lamb, and I think it made the powers that be feel better about themselves.

The extremely weak case never met the legal threshold of a murder.

But they put that before a court anyway so they could stand there say: 'We put this in front of a court, and the court made the decision, not us'.

But the agony for Martyn is not over. He is now facing an investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, despite having been cleared by a jury,

The IOPC are a total waste of space in my view.

On killing someone in the line of duty 

Taking a life is traumatic - but I believe Chris Kaba would have done the same to Martyn Blake.

Killing someone is difficult to live with because that's never what you set out to do on that day.

Firearms officers are told to go and deal with some of the nastiest, deadliest people in UK society, on behalf of our civilised society.

Sgt Blake could easily have been on a different shift or on a day off. It could have been a different team asked to follow that car. It could have been any of us.

Some might feel guilty about killing someone, some not. It is a personal thing - you have taken a life and that can be hard.

But with regards to somebody like Chris Kaba. He wouldn't have given a second thought to taking somebody's life.

It is exceptionally sad what has happened. However, the choice had to be made, and that is what the outcome was.

I believe there's a certain amount of bravery in actually shooting someone because these days you know as a police officer what comes next.

Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn and Sadiq Khan should apologise

Political interference within policing is so rife now. It's disgusting.

Activism including the BLM movement also came to the forefront and all of a sudden people made this a race issue.

In the case of Chris Kaba, the officers involved don't know who's driving that car at that point. The driver could be white, black, male, female, you don't know.

But afterwards there was there was just a clamour to appease.

People like Abbott, Corbyn and Khan should apologise. But they won't. They're completely unaccountable, aren't they. They're never going to say, 'oh, I'm really sorry. I think we got this wrong'.

Policing has just become a political kind of football, and the officers that are trying their best to do that job do generally feel just kicked from pillar to post, you know, and this has a serious implication for going forward.

Why would you join the police? You know? Why would you? London tube drivers earn three times the salary of a probationary officer.

You'd think: 'I don't get paid very much. Why would I want to work earlies, lates, and nights. Why would I want to give up time with my family? Why would I want my health damaged? And then I do my job, get hung out to dry to make other people feel better'.

Will Martyn Blake return to frontline policing? I don't think so

There is a bounty on his head. His family is in danger. He will have moved home and his kids will have moved schools. His wider family will be affected as well. It must be very hard to move on from that.

Chris Kaba was not in the mafia - he was is in a gang from south of the river, but nonetheless an extremely powerful and extremely deadly group.

Martyn's life has now changed forever because of one incident where he was asked to do his job and protect the people of London.

Would he want to remain in the police service? I don't think so. Does he want to be involved in an organisation that put him up as the sacrificial lamb?

The Metropolitan Police Service at the moment lacks leadership. It has got lots of managers, we've got lots of people who can try to balance budgets and decide on policy and things like that.

But we don't have any leaders. The Commissioner is not a leader. My view is that his biggest concern on Monday was the fact that he may no longer have any armed police officers - rather than Martyn Blake himself.

On society being ungrateful for the work of police officers

I always talk about the vocal minority versus the silent majority in these circumstances.

You do feel that within certain sections of society that as an armed police officer you are not valid for the role that you do - and I think that's also policing as a whole.

When you get to the nuances of firearms policing, some people don't want to accept that this kind of evil person exists and has to be dealt with by police firearms officers.

Some people live in a complete kind of Utopia where we're not needed or have a Hollywood taint on what firearms policing is all about, like if a criminal has his fingers on the trigger we can easily shoot the gun out of his hand.

You have another group that are most probably educated by the computer game Call of Duty – where life and death isn't real.

But then I think you have the silent majority who are fully grateful for what police officers do.

But their voices aren't heard, because I think in current society, if you go against the vocal minority, you get labelled as some form of 'ist' or accused of some kind of 'ism'.