The Old Bailey jury heard that while Mr Kaba was unarmed, and Mr Blake gave evidence that he could see the driver was a “comparatively young and athletic” black man, police did not know who was at the wheel, and the car had been linked to a previous incident.
They later disclosed video evidence that Mr Kaba had shot a rival in an incident days before he was stopped and killed by police.
The Met said Mr Kaba was a leading member of the 67 gang, active in south London.
While news organisations, including the , knew about his background, for legal reasons they were unable to report it until after the verdict.
In the Commons, the Labour MP Kim Johnson claimed the media were using “racist gang tropes to justify his killing”.
But in his speech Sir Mark said Mr Kaba was part of an extensive gang in Lambeth, south London, which “coerces and exploits black boys and draws them into gangs and crime”.
“They’re amongst the sort of 10 or so most active gangs in London,” he said, and involved in 11 shootings over the last year,
He argued that most of the discussion online had focused not on the issues at the centre of the case – whether a police officer was legally justified in firing the fatal shot, given the situation – but on whether the police were racist.
He said “that’s not to say that there’s not a national conversation to be had about disproportionality in the justice system”.
“We have a decade of data that tells us that young black men in London are 13 times more likely to be murdered than their white counterparts.”
He said this should provide a national outcry in the same way that the police were criticised for policing Covid.
“Trust in policing will be helped by an honest conversation about the risks facing different communities and a collective effort to give everyone equal chance of thriving in London and not be drawn into criminality.”
But following Mr Kaba’s case, he backed demands for police firearms officers facing serious criminal charges to be given anonymity.
In response, Ms Abbott tweeted that Sir Mark was supposed to have been the “new broom” at the Met, but instead of offering a “new beginning” he had continued to support a “lack of police accountability”.
In his speech Sir Mark said the case had so affected officers they were “more concerned about legal jeopardy than they are about physical jeopardy”.
