Mobile phone footage allegedly showing the moment the famous Sycamore Gap tree crashed to the ground to the sound of a chainsaw has been played to jurors.

Groundworker Daniel Graham, 39, and mechanic Adam Carruthers, 32, each deny two counts of criminal damage to the tree and to Hadrian’s Wall overnight on 28 September 2023.

Jurors at Newcastle Crown Court heard the tree was a “totemic” feature of Northumberland and was part of a place “much loved by many thousands of people”.

The video clip lasting two minutes and 40 seconds was recovered from Graham’s phone and played to the court twice – once showing the dark, raw footage, and a second time after it had been enhanced by a police specialist.

Police analyst Amy Sutherland told the court the video was in the download section of Graham’s phone, which was taken from his jacket pocket.

In the enhanced black and white version, with audio of wind blowing and a chainsaw buzzing, a figure can be seen working at the trunk of the tree, before it finally crashes to the ground.

Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, said the original video was enhanced by changing the contrast, putting a border around the frame and brightening the film “so it could be seen more clearly”.

The prosecution alleges that the two friends travelled to the location in the pitch black during Storm Agnes and used a chainsaw to fell the sycamore, which then crashed on to Hadrian’s Wall.

The damage caused was valued at £622,191 for the tree and £1,144 to the Roman wall, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site.

The court has heard that Graham, of Carlisle, and Adam Carruthers, of Wigton, Cumbria, swapped messages after word spread of the tree being felled.

A statement by Tony Wilmott, a senior archaeologist with Historic England, said he produced a seven-page report into the damage caused to Hadrian’s Wall.

He said the Sycamore Gap name was coined in the 1980s, and over the decades it has become one of Northumberland’s most appreciated features.

He said: “Its unmistakable profile has been repeated in many media and because of this it has become totemic.

“It has become a place of marriage proposals, family visits and even the location of ashes to be spread.

“The place is much loved by many thousands of people.”

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The court heard a statement from archaeologist and inspector for Historic England, Lee McFarlane, that some of the stones in Hadrian’s Wall were damaged when the tree was felled.

The wall and the tree belong to the National Trust.

The trial continues.

At a midnight briefing in Kentish Town police station in north London, officers are shown a photograph of Danny Downes, a large white man with a wispy beard, who has been linked to a shooting in the area.

Swabs on a bullet casing found at the scene have come back with a match to his DNA.

Intelligence suggests he keeps the gun at home.

In the room are MO19 officers, colleagues of Martyn Blake, the firearms officer who was charged with murder after opening fire on the job.

Blake was acquitted of murdering Chris Kaba last October, but with Wednesday’s police watchdog decision to launch a gross misconduct hearing against Blake, the case still lingers over his unit.

Police officers don’t get paid anything extra for carrying a gun – what they get is the dangerous callouts, and a huge responsibility strapped to their shoulders.

The Kentish town operation, like any shift, is another chance when shots could be fired and split-second risk assessments made in the moment could be scrutinised for months, even years, careers could go on hold with suspended officers publicly named as they go on trial.

They could end up in prison for the most serious of crimes.

“Why risk it?” many asked themselves during the Blake trial, and at one point, it was reported that up to 300 officers had turned in their firearms permits, allowing them to carry weapons.

The burden of high accountability is what a firearms officer carries with them in their holster, and many would argue, not least the victims’ families of police shootings, that is how it should be; the power to kill in the name of the state must be accompanied by the highest scrutiny.

‘Crush the spirit of good officers’

Some campaigners feel they are under-scrutinised and have a habit of being acquitted for their actions, but, after the Martyn Blake verdict the Met Commissioner, Mark Rowley, said the system for holding police to account was “broken,” adding “the more we crush the spirit of good officers – the less they can fight crime”.

In a statement on Wednesday, Assistant Commissioner Lawrence Taylor said: “We know another lengthy process will fall heavily on the shoulders of NX121 (Blake’s code name) and more widely our firearms officers who continue to bravely and tirelessly police the streets of London every day to protect the public.”

Chris Kaba’s family said they welcomed the IOPC’s decision, adding: “We hope this leads to him being removed from the Met Police. What Martyn Blake did was deeply wrong.”

In the Kentish Town briefing room, plans for the operation are set out: room layouts, entry points, cordons, risk assessments.

Then Derek Caroll, a specialist tactical firearms commander, tells the room why it is proportional that the planned dawn raid to arrest Downes should involve officers who carry guns.

Caroll said: “Clearly, he has used the firearm in a public place, so that’s the reason armed officers have been deployed… the subject these officers are going to go up against has either immediate possession of a firearm or access to a firearm.

“Because there is a gun outstanding there is a potential risk – he has a propensity to fire the weapon.”

The point seems obvious and laboured, but the case of Martyn Blake and other shootings has made it clear that this stuff needs to be spelled out as often as possible.

Sergeant Blake had been on a similar mission to these officers when he shot 23-year-old Chris Kaba.

The death of Kaba in September 2022

He and other officers were involved in stopping an Audi Q8 used in a shooting in Brixton.

Arguably, there are more variables trying to stop a car than in a dawn house raid where suspects are usually asleep.

With car stops, they can see you coming, it’s not always clear who is driving, and the vehicle itself can be used as a weapon.

All of this played out in the attempted hard stop of the Audi Q8 in September 2022.

An unmarked police car was following the vehicle when it turned a corner and Blake’s marked vehicle blocked its path.

Officers didn’t know Kaba was driving the car, and with armed officers now on foot, Kaba tried to ram his way out.

Seconds later, he was shot by a single round through the windscreen.

The police watchdog referred Sergeant Blake to the CPS, and he was charged with murder.

In court, he argued that he had opened fire because it was his genuinely held belief that the driver posed an imminent threat to life and in October last year, the jury found him not guilty.

After the verdict, it emerged that days before he was shot, Chris Kaba himself was alleged to have shot someone in a nightclub, chasing his victim outside, shooting him again.

‘Gung-ho’ behaviour

Equality activist Stafford Scott believes the killing of Chris Kaba is part of a pattern of what he called “gung-ho” behaviour from Metropolitan Police officers against black men.

He feels the hard stop was an unnecessarily “reckless” tactic.

He lists other shooting victims such as Jermaine Baker and Mark Duggan and blames “institutional racism” within the force – pointing to the matching findings of the McPherson report of 1999 and the more recent Lousie Casey Inquiry in 2023, which both made damning conclusions about police racism.

The prosecution in Blake’s case didn’t argue that racism played a part in the shooting, but having watched the trial, Scott says it left many questions.

“What we have again is this notion of ‘honestly held belief’ and that’s why we are going to the European courts because we won’t get justice in this system – ‘honestly held belief’ must be rational,” he says.

“And let’s remember there was all this stuff in the media afterwards about what Chris Kaba did before he was shot, but at the time Martyn Blake shot Chris Kaba he didn’t even know it was Chris Kaba behind the wheel. He didn’t know who it was.”

These arguments, and what happened at the scene, will again be played out in a misconduct hearing, which requires a lower threshold of proof than criminal proceedings and could lead to Blake being sacked from the force.

Like tiptoeing armadillos

In the operation in Kentish Town, for the officers strapping on their Sig MCXs and holstering their Glocks, the last thing they want is to have to use them.

They are trained to only open fire if they believe there is a risk to life, and a large part of their training is also in first aid, be that on victims they find at the scene – or on someone who they have felt compelled to shoot themselves.

It is a surreal scene as these heavily tooled-up officers in helmets and body armour stalk through the everyday scene of a dark council estate then, like tiptoeing armadillos, they quietly shuffle up the stairwell with their forcible entry tool kit.

The door is busted down in seconds to the shouts of “armed police!” and after loud negotiations at gunpoint, the highly overweight figure of Downes is brought out and cuffed in his boxer shorts.

The man is so large, it leads to serious debriefing questions afterwards about what to do if a subject is too big to get out of the door and even taking him downstairs is done by bum shuffle.

“There was a knife in a sheet under one of the beds,” says one of the arresting officers to his commander, “and then the firearm found down the side of the sofa, which is quite readily available to the subject.”

“We got him, no shots fired, and we can be nothing but happy with that,” responds the Commander.

Success is ‘where shots aren’t fired’

Afterwards, Commander Caroll tells Sky News: “It’s a satisfaction getting the gun back – but unfortunately, there’s guns out there and we are doing these jobs very regularly.

“We get a gun off the street. We get the person arrested and as with every firearms operation – every successful firearms operation, for the Met and for the country – is one where shots aren’t fired.”

Out of 4,000 operations a year, shots are only fired once or twice, but whenever they are, questions will always be asked.

There is a balance between rigorous accountability for the officer, a process of justice for bereaved families and the impact it may have on policing if officers fear their names could become known in criminal networks after they shot a gang member or if someone’s “honestly held belief” is not enough to keep them from jail.

Campaigners and members of Chris Kaba’s family say the Blake verdict shows that officers can kill without consequence – his colleagues say he has already paid a heavy price for doing what he is trained to do.

When they are not on operations to seize guns, MO19 officers patrol London poised to deal with stabbings, shootings and terrorist attacks – there’s little doubt the public wants them to keep doing that.

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Downes, 23, has since pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm with intent to cause fear of harm and possession of a Class B substance.

He is due to be sentenced in June.

The officer cleared of murder after shooting dead Chris Kaba will face a gross misconduct hearing, following a review by the police watchdog.

The 24-year-old’s family welcomed the decision, saying they hope it leads to sergeant Martyn Blake, 41, being sacked from the Metropolitan Police.

Mr Kaba, who was not armed, had both hands on the steering wheel of his vehicle when he was shot in the head by the firearms officer in Streatham, south London, on 5 September 2022.

A helicopter and six police cars were involved in stopping Mr Kaba after the Audi Q8 he was driving had been linked to a shooting outside a school in nearby Brixton the previous evening.

Mr Kaba had turned into Kirkstall Gardens, where Mr Blake was inside a marked police BMW, before trying to make his escape.

The murder trial hinged on the following 17 seconds, when Mr Kaba reversed a short distance, hitting an unmarked police car behind, then accelerated forward, reaching an estimated 12mph before colliding with the BMW and a parked Tesla.

Armed officers were heard shouting “go, go, go” and “armed police, get out of the f***ing car,” as they surrounded Mr Kaba’s vehicle in footage played in court.

Mr Kaba then reversed at 8mph, hitting the unmarked Volvo behind, and was stationary as Mr Blake pulled the trigger of his gun less than a second later, followed by shouts of “shots fired” and “where from?”

He died in hospital in the early hours of the next day after the bullet travelled through the windscreen and struck him in the head.

Speaking after Mr Blake was cleared of murder in October, Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the officer made a split-second decision on what he thought was necessary “to protect his colleagues and to protect London”.

Prosecutors had argued Mr Blake may have “become angry, frustrated and annoyed” and Mr Kaba had done nothing in the seconds before he was shot to justify his decision to pull the trigger.

The officer said he didn’t intend to kill Mr Kaba, adding: “I had a genuine belief that there was an imminent threat to life, I thought one or more of my colleagues was about to die.”

The jury – which was not told Mr Kaba was a core member of a notorious south London gang who was suspected of carrying out a nightclub shooting – deliberated for about three hours before finding Mr Blake not guilty of murder.

But the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said he will face a gross misconduct hearing after a “thorough review” of all the evidence in the case.

The threshold is a lower test than for criminal proceedings and a police disciplinary panel will decide whether misconduct is proven or not.

IOPC director Amanda Rowe said: “We understand the impact this decision will have on Chris Kaba’s family and Sergeant Blake and acknowledge the significant public interest in this case, particularly among our black communities, firearms officers and the wider policing community.

“This is a decision we have taken based on examining all the evidence, views of all parties and by applying the thresholds set out in legislation and guidance which govern our work.

“The legal test for deciding whether there is a case to answer is low – is there sufficient evidence upon which, on the balance of probabilities, a disciplinary panel could make a finding of misconduct. This has been met and therefore we need to follow the legal process. 

“We appreciate that the Home Office is carrying out a review of the legal test for the use of force in misconduct cases, however, we must apply the law as it currently stands.”

Mr Kaba’s family vowed they “won’t be silenced” and would continue fighting for “justice and for real change” following the verdict.

In a statement issued through the charity Inquest after the IOPC’s decision, they said: “We hope this leads to him being removed from the Met Police.

“What Martyn Blake did was deeply wrong. We are still so devastated to have lost Chris – this should never have happened.

“The fact that the Met promoted Martyn Blake after the verdict only deepened our pain and showed a complete disregard for our loss.

“Martyn Blake should not be allowed to remain a police officer. He should lose his job.”

The Met said the force made “strong representations” that Mr Blake, who they referred to by the cypher NX121 used before a judge lifted an anonymity order, should not face any further action.

Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor said: “We know any fatal use of force by police understandably prompts concern among communities.

“NX121 made a split-second decision on what he believed was necessary to protect his colleagues and London and a jury unanimously decided that was an honestly-held belief and the force used was reasonable.

“However, the IOPC has now determined that NX121 has a case to answer for his use of force and has directed us to hold a gross misconduct hearing.

“We know another lengthy process will fall heavily on the shoulders of NX121 and more widely our firearms officers, who continue to bravely and tirelessly police the streets of London every day to protect the public.”

Mr Taylor said the Met will ask a chief officer from another force to chair the hearing to ensure independence.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has ordered a review into the accountability of firearms officers.

Some of the force’s firearms officers turned in their weapons in protest after Mr Blake was charged with murder and the IOPC’s decision caused more anger among the rank and file.

Matt Cane, general secretary of the Metropolitan Police Federation that represents them, said: “This is frankly a nonsensical ruling by the IOPC that will shock police officers across London and indeed the country.

“Police officers should not have their livelihoods or liberty put at risk for performing what unequivocally, as has been found in a court of law, is their lawful and appropriate function.

“And yet putting this brave officer on trial for murder – as astonishing as that was – was not enough for the IOPC.”

Mr Blake is only the fourth police officer to be charged with murder or manslaughter over a fatal police shooting in England and Wales since 1990, while a total of 83 people have died in such incidents, according to the Inquest charity.

In that time, only one on-duty officer, Benjamin Monk, has been found guilty of manslaughter – over the death of former Aston Villa striker Dalian Atkinson, 48 – while none have been convicted of murder.