I love the smell of gun oil in the morning. After attending firearms refresher training and leaving my revolver absolutely spotless, the odour of the lubricant, which also cleaned the weapon, would linger under my fingernails for hours. However, the rigorous training that was relentlessly drilled into my head has stayed with me to this day, such was the professionalism, seriousness and importance of it.
The weaponry, tactics and instruction of police officers trusted to carry guns onto the streets of Britain have evolved and improved hugely since my day, and the Sergeant known as NX121 was a highly competent, courageous and dedicated product of all that.
In stark contrast stands a discredited organisation called the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). The most recent Government-ordered review of the IOPC made no less than 93 recommendations, and called for much-needed improvement across virtually every aspect of its operations.
A look at the IOPC website will give you a clue as to why it is such an under-performing shambles, for the leadership team is almost exclusively public sector nobodies, aka civil servants, whose previous employment has been in healthcare, teaching, the Home Office, housing and the like.
The last time I looked at the responsibilities for those who work in those sectors, none of it involved making a split-second decision whilst facing down an extremely violent gangster who was using a very powerful car as a battering ram in an effort to evade capture.
Which brings me neatly onto the abominable piece of garbage that was Chris Kaba, a man whose history of violent criminal behaviour began at an early age, and included beating up a pregnant girlfriend, and shooting a man in a crowded nightclub, who he then followed out onto the street in an effort to finish him off.
There’s much more. When NX121 fired a single fatal shot into the head of Kaba on 5th September 2022 he did the human race a favour, but that hasn’t stopped the usual rabble from taking to the streets with clenched fists, to wave their Socialist Worker funded placards, and bellow, ‘No justice, no peace’, and other associated drivel.
The Chris Kaba misconduct case is a stain upon our nation - but it's the tip of the iceberg - Peter Bleksley
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Nor did it stop the IOPC and the Crown Prosecution Service from taking the ludicrous decision to put NX121 on trial at the Old Bailey for murder, a charge so unjustified that the jury slung it out after deliberating for a mere three hours.
They were so outraged but this completely unnecessary waste of time and public money that they wrote a letter to the judge, which they wanted him to read out, but he refused to do this. I have a source who saw this letter, and the jury’s criticism of both the IOPC and the CPS was excoriating.
Even when there is insufficient evidence to justify a charge and secure a conviction, the IOPC’s decision making appears to be swayed by its warped thinking, which brought them to say this about the pathetic prosecution of NX121: "We appreciate this trial will have been of significant public interest, and particularly so within our Black communities." Black communities are now theirs, eh?
The IOPC was right when it said the trial of NX121 was of ‘significant public interest’. When the story of Kaba’s shooting broke, most reasonable people in the land felt that his actions were probably going to be justified, because fortunately, we do not have trigger-happy, reckless armed police officers marauding across the country.
These people were, of course, proved right, which is why there was so much anger this week when the IOPC announced that NX121 was to face a Gross Misconduct disciplinary panel. He’s been tried and acquitted once, that should be the end of the story, but oh no, the IOPC want another bite at the cherry, as they might say, ‘for our Black communities.’This is not prosecution, this is persecution.
This is not a search for justice, it is a racially motivated witch-hunt, aimed at satisfying a baying minority mob. The IOPC is a disgrace to anyone with a sense of fair play and a stain upon our nation.
