By Rob Harris
London: Matildas captain Sam Kerr has been cleared of the charge that she intentionally racially abused a police officer two years ago after a night out with her fiancee, Kristie Mewis.
After four hours of deliberation, the jury did not believe that Kerr intended to cause harassment, alarm or distress, that Constable Stephen Lovell felt any of these emotions, and that the offence was racially aggravated.
The verdict means one of Australia’s most famous athletes will face no punishment for calling the officer “f---ing stupid and white” in the early hours of January 30, 2023.
These were five key elements of her case.
The chaotic taxi ride, a broken window
Matildas captain Sam Kerr had hailed a black taxi after a night out with her partner, United States international Kristie Mewis, after three failed attempts to get an Uber.
At 2.11am the driver called to complain that two women inside his taxi were drunk and abusive. Kerr had been sick and was refusing to pay for the fare and the cleaning charge. He also said Mewis was trying to smash the rear passenger window.
An operator advised the driver to pull up outside Twickenham police station and seek the help of officers there. Mewis later admitted in court she kicked out the window because the driver had refused to take them home and that they felt they were being “kidnapped” and “held hostage”. She said she smashed the window in an attempt to escape.
Kerr said the “dangerous” driving continued for 15 to 20 minutes and added: “I was terrified for my life.
“Everything was going through my mind about being in a car with a stranger I deemed to be dangerous.”
Sam Kerr leaves court after being cleared of alleged racially aggravated harassment.Credit: AP
At 2.18am, the taxi pulled up outside the police station, and the driver called the police to say he had arrived.
Officers Stephen Lovell and Samuel Limb were in a marked police car driving towards the police station at 2.20am. The officers saw smashed glass around the taxi and Kerr attempting to crawl out through the broken rear side window.
Kerr and Mewis said they had also phoned the police while they were in the taxi, but according to the control room, only one call had been made – by the taxi driver. Mewis told officers that they were internationals and did not know the British emergency number.
Kerr said they had pressed the emergency button on her phone and had spoken to a woman. Records presented to the court later confirmed this. The call was made 10 minutes after the driver called police and started driving to the station.
Prosecutors alleged the plastic screen between the passengers and the driver was also smashed. Neither Kerr nor Mewis recalled this but could not rule out that they had done the damage.
They later agreed to pay £900 ($1780) for the damage and Kerr was “de-arrested” over a criminal damage charge.
The bank account and the big ‘bluff’
After taking the pair inside the station, Lovell said he “kept getting interrupted” and described Kerr as “quite abusive”.
Police witnesses said both women were “inebriated, emotional” and in a “distressed state”.
Lovell explained to them that they must pay the taxi driver for the damage they had caused to his cab. In response, Kerr “showed me her bank account on her phone”, Lovell said.
The prosecution played bodycam footage of what they alleged was the act. Kerr said she was showing Lovell her call log to prove she had called the police about the driver. The prosecution alleged that happened for the first time about four minutes later.
Prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones said: “The defendant used her mobile telephone to show PC Lovell the contents of her bank account as if to say, ‘Look, I could easily afford to pay for any damage to the taxi’ if she wanted to.”
He added: “PC Lovell felt that Ms Kerr was showing off her wealth, and he felt somewhat belittled.”
Kerr later said on the night: “I’m not paying some dodgy c---- window. I will sit here until four in the morning and get the Chelsea lawyers on this. I am not backing down.” She said it was an attempt to “bluff” to “make myself feel protected”.
In court, Lovell agreed that, at times, the exchange became “childish”.
“You’re, like, irrelevant,” Kerr told the officers in the body-worn footage. “OK, and so are you,” Lovell responds.
A lifelong fear of cabs
Kerr told the court that the 1996-97 Claremont murders of several young women in Fremantle, Western Australia, in which suspicion initially fell on cab drivers, had left her suspicious of taxis.
She normally relied on traceable Ubers, but had not been able to get one in the early hours of January 30, when she and her Mewis were trying to get home.
“I lived in a state where, for 30 years, there was actually a serial killer roaming that was thought to be a taxi driver. Everyone was talking about not getting in taxis,” she said.
Bradley Edwards was found guilty of murdering Ciara Glennon (left) and Jane Rimmer (right) in the 1990s, but not guilty of the murder of Sarah Spiers (centre).
In 2020, Bradley Robert Edwards was convicted of killing two women in separate abductions in Perth in the 1990s. Prosecutors at the time said Edwards lured the women into his work car, which looked like a taxi.
Taking questions from her barrister, Grace Forbes, Kerr tried to explain why she was “triggered” by her altercation with th taxi driver after a drunken night out and then again during the subsequent heated interaction with Lovell at Twickenham police station.
“I’ve honestly never been that scared in my life before,” Kerr said in the witness box. She said she had put her head out of the window when she began to feel sick before the driver had “rolled it up” and begun to “drive dangerously”.
“He accelerated and began to swerve in and out of lanes ... We were getting thrown around,” Kerr said, adding he kept “speeding up and stopping” and “it felt like he was going wherever he thought”.
The slur itself
On bodycam footage played in court, Kerr could be heard to say: “You guys are stupid and white. You guys are f---ing stupid and white.
“I’m looking you in the eyes, I’m looking you in the eyes, you guys are f---ing stupid, I’m f---ing over this s---.”
Lovell then arrested Kerr for criminal damage and then racially aggravated public order.
Kerr did not dispute the words that were used but rejected that they were abusive or insulting within the terms of the offence. The prosecution added that there was no dispute over what Kerr said, meaning jurors had to decide what she meant and how it made Lovell feel.
Lovell said the comments from Kerr had made him feel “upset”.
Forbes, Kerr’s barrister, said Kerr’s words did not make her a criminal.
“The law is a little more nuanced, a little more human than that,” she argued.
“Sam Kerr did not feel hostility to the officer because he is white. The words were a comment, we say – however poorly expressed – about positions of power, about privilege and about how those things might colour perception.”
When asked about the remarks she made to Lovell and why she had brought up his race, Kerr, who has an ethnically white mother and an Anglo-Indian father, said she thought the officer was “using his privilege and power” over her.
To that, prosecutor Emlyn Jones asked: “You were turning his whiteness into an insult, weren’t you?”
He added: “At the moment of expressing your hostility to him because of what you thought was his stupidity, you also chose to show hostility towards him because of his whiteness.”
Kerr replied: “That’s not what I meant.”
To that, Emlyn Jones said: “It’s what you did.”
Kerr responded: “It’s what I did, yes.”
The apology: too little, too late
Later that day, at 10.30pm, Kerr arrived at Kingston police station voluntarily to be interviewed and was not accompanied by a lawyer.
She told police she didn’t recall calling the officers “f---ing stupid and white” but accepted she had when she viewed the bodycam footage.
In the voluntary interview, played to the court, Kerr said that she would “apologise” to the officers for the “whole event”.
“I wish I’d just had a walkaway and dealt with it in the morning, really, like I am now … hindsight’s a beautiful thing,” she told the officer.
“I was obviously intoxicated, and I shouldn’t have been so front-footed, but I was very, very threatened with how I felt, and I’m a very honest person.
“I didn’t feel protected in that moment as a female, and I’m here voluntarily because I want this sorted out.”
She later added that she did not feel protected in the police station because “we only spoke to three males even though we were with a dangerous male”.
Asked if her comments could be perceived as racist, Kerr replied: “I am aware that anything can be perceived as racist, for sure.”
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