The jury in Sam Kerr’s trial has been told the police’s conduct was “completely unacceptable,” when dealing with the football star.
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“Two individuals went straight up to a marked police car looking for help in a state of distress.
“How and why did we go from that to what was an utterly unproductive, heated, argument?” Kerr’s lawyer Grace Forbes told a London court on Monday, UK time.
The Matildas captain’s trial is coming to an end with the defence presenting closing arguments on Monday to the jury at Kingston Crown Court, London, after the prosecution wrapped up its case on Friday.
The jury has now retired to consider its verdict.
Kerr, 31 is charged with causing racially aggravated harassment to Officer Stephen Lovell during an incident in London in the early hours of January 30, 2023.
It is alleged that Kerr and her fiance Kristie Mewis had been returning from a night out partying when they became embroiled in a fracas in a taxi which ended up with the driver taking them to Twickenham police station in the city’s south west.
At the police station, Kerr, who is mixed race, is alleged to have become “abusive and insulting” towards Officer Lovell, calling him “stupid and white”.
‘Completely unacceptable’
In her closing argument, Ms Forbes claimed to the jury that it was “completely unacceptable” that police had not taken Kerr and Mewis’ allegations against the cab driver more seriously.
The first “vital minutes” of the encounter between police and the two footballers was not recorded by bodycams, said Ms Forbes.
“It seems that no one thought that it was not worth putting on their body-worn footage when they saw a woman climbing through a broken window, when they were making allegations of false imprisonment.
“Even if you are drunk, you can still be a victim of crime,” she added, reported The Guardian.
“PC Lovell conceded in evidence that their allegations were capable of amounting to dangerous driving and false imprisonment. Why did he say on the night what she had told him didn’t amount to any offences?
Ms Forbes added that Chelsea forward Kerr was in “no way anti-police,” reported The Daily Telegraph from court in Kingston.
The image of Kerr presented by the bodycam footage of her drunk in the police station was a “one dimensional image,” her lawyer said.
‘What if PC Lovell had been black?’
On Friday, the prosecution made its closing arguments to the jury.
Lawyer Bill Emlyn Jones attempted to cut to what he said was the core of the case after a day where the Matildas star’s mother and teammates had flocked to her defence.
After Kerr was described as a “truly special human,” and one of the “kindest players”, Mr Jones said it was irrelevant because she had still called a policeman, “f***ing stupid and white”.
“It might make it surprising, it might make it sad but it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” he said.
Mr Jones said what happened in the taxi didn’t make “one blind bit of difference to what this case is about,” and said Kerr was “drunk and angry,” and “lashing out in a rage”.
The lawyer said he wouldn’t go as far as calling Kerr a “card-carrying racist” but asked the jury to consider a “hypothetic question”.
“What if PC Lovell had been a black male and what if she had called him f***ing stupid and black? Now of course that is not a fair question, because black and white is not a fair swap.
“Calling a white man is not as loaded, so you can’t just turn it around, it is not as easy as that.
“In the heat of the moment this was an insult delivered in reference to race and that is what the law prohibits,” Mr Jones said.
“The test for you is the same regardless of the ethnicity in question. She was insulting him and, at the time, she was hostile to him by reference to his race. So the fact you will be able to think of much worse examples of racial aggravation is irrelevant.
“Would we consider this a racially aggravated insult if she had said stupid and black? Of course you would, it wouldn’t even be contestable.”
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