Police ‘treated me differently because of skin colour’: Kerr

Matildas captain Sam Kerr has told a court she called a British police officer ‘f … stupid and white’ because she felt he didn’t believe her account of her drunken behaviour in a London taxi.

Samantha Kerr at Kingston Crown Court for day three of her trial. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay

Matildas captain Sam Kerr has told a court she called a British police officer “f … stupid and white” on several occasions and made comments about the drunken incident being “a racial thing” because she believed she was being treated differently and not believed, because of her own skin colour.

Kerr also told Kingston Crown Court she was the “masculine one” in her relationship with partner Kristie Mewis and that she had switched into protective mode after seeing Mewis’s distressed state in the back of a London black cab, having been reminded of the 1996 – 1997 Claremont serial killings in Western Australia.

But she denied “kicking off” in the back of the cab in the early hours of January 30, 2023 before an incident at Twickenham police station in southwest London.

In the witness box on day three of her trial for racially aggravated harassment, Kerr, 31, told the jury that while she expressed herself poorly at the police station, the point she was trying to get across with the words “stupid” and “white” was: “I felt like they were treating me differently and not believing me and treating me as a person who had done something wrong because they were in the position of privilege and power and I believe they were treating me differently because of the colour of my skin.”

Kerr told the court she identifies as white Anglo-Indian, and added that she felt Police Constable Stephen Lovell “had no idea about the power and privilege he had in that moment or in life, by the way he commented on what the taxi driver could have done to me.”

This was after PC Lovell dismissed her concerns about Sarah Everard who was raped and killed by a police officer while walking home at dinner time at Clapham Junction.

She added: “It shows he has never experienced that or ever had to think about what could happen to you as a female”.

Samantha Kerr runs up the stairs into Kingston Crown Court for day three of her trial. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay

Kerr has denied the charge of racial aggravated harassment, alarm and distress of a police officer. The court has seen body cam footage of a drunk Kerr repeatedly calling police constable Stephen Lovell “f … g stupid and white” and other police evidence that she spoke of his “white privilege”.

During the start of cross-examination on Wednesday afternoon (local time), Kerr insisted she still maintained she was being kidnapped even though the black cab driver had taken her to a point of safety, Twickenham police station.

The driver had rung the police control room at 2.11am, and again at 2.18am while Kerr had rung the emergency services at 2.22am when near to the police station. Kerr had got out of the cab through the broken window, and she opened the door for Mewis to exit normally.

Kerr told the court she believed the cab driver could continue to pick up further passengers even though she admitted to vomiting on his cab.

She said “there was nothing to know about him’’ when asked about the cab driver and could only remember begging him to let them out.

She told the jury she could not remember he had a very strong South Asian (Indian) accent.

Kerr said revisiting the video of herself from the early hours of January 30, 2023 was “really hard to watch” and she was “quite embarrassed”. She told the jury of four men and eight women: “It was a hard one to watch, not only because of the way I was acting but also watching myself in that much distress”.

Kerr who plays for Chelsea in the women’s super league competition, said she had finally agreed to settle a bill to the cab driver of £900 ($1700) to cover the costs of the fare, cleaning and damage to the driver’s protective screen and the smashed rear window of the cab which resulted in charges of criminal damage being dropped.

This was because Mewis reminded her at the police station that any police issue could impact her chances of getting selected in the United States world cup team for the FIFA World Cup.

Earlier Kerr told the court she had refused to pay for the damage because it was Mewis, and not herself who had kicked the rear window out, and she couldn’t explain the damage to the protective driver screen.

“I am a big believer it was an injustice, we don’t try to escape from someone and then get charged for it,’’ she said.

Kerr gave evidence that the two women were standing in the black cab, not wearing seat belts and accused the driver of throwing them around by swerving and driving erratically immediately after she had been sick. She said they hadn’t called the police earlier in the ride because they had been hoping things would become “normal”.

Just prior to this time she said she felt exhausted and tired and had fallen asleep.

Kerr revealed that she was marrying Mewis in December and the couple were now expecting a baby boy due in May.

She had begun a long distance relationship with Mewis some six months after arriving in London to play for Chelsea football club when Mewis, then based in Houston, Texas, “slid into my dm’s”.

Kerr, told the jury she had always taken Ubers because there is remote tracking of the vehicle, a practice born of growing up in Western Australia.

“I lived in a state (of Australia) where for 30 years there was a serial killer roaming, it was thought to have been a taxi driver and that everyone was talking about not getting into taxis,’’ she said.

She told the jury the Claremont killings “was happening close to Fremantle where we were (living)’’ and that the case was only resolved two or three years prior to her coming to London.

Kerr said she had shared a bottle of wine with Mewis at Amazonico London, a Latin American restaurant in exclusive Berkeley Square on the night of January 29, 2023, before catching up with friends who were celebrating a birthday party for a colleague called “Steph” at Bagatelle restaurant nearby.

She said she had two cocktails there.

The group then moved to a nightclub in “a dungeon” but Kerr said she and Mewis only stayed 15 minutes because the scene “wasn’t for us.’’

She added: I am not normally a nightclub night person, I usually do things in a day being from Australia, being Australian I like to be out in the sun rather than a closed dungeon.”

Kerr told the court she first became aware of racial discrimination when she was about nine or ten years old.

“At the start I was quite confused but then it was not too bad. Confusion turned into understanding about why and it turned into more disappointment and sadness,’’ she said.

Kerr said the issue of race “is always a touchy subject”. She claimed that at school, her teachers had singled her out, claiming she was the troublemaker.

“I definitely was not (a trouble maker),’’ she said, adding that she was often singled out on social media and also “when in a shopping centre if not dressed correctly I am often followed around by a security guard”.

The trial continues.