Sam Kerr trial: how a drunken night out revealed questions of race, power and privilege | Sam Kerr

It was a drunken night out that ended in an exchange in a south-west London police station that lasted about an hour. Such incidents are commonplace for officers and rarely garner much furore. But this particular case has captured the attention of football fans around the world.

Sam Kerr, the captain of the Australian women’s football team and Chelsea’s star striker, was at the centre of the incident in the early hours of 30 January 2023. When the charge of racially aggravated harassment was filed against her last year, the hearts of many sports fans around the world sank.

But as more details emerged, specifically the revelation that she was being dragged through British courts for calling a Metropolitan police officer “fucking stupid and white”, the picture became more complex.

Over the weekend, before Kerr was cleared of the charge on Tuesday, the Australian sports minister, Anika Wells, publicly backed the footballer, saying she had the nation “behind her”.

At the heart of the case was a question around privilege and who, on that night, held it. On paper, the answer was Kerr, who is one of the best-known and highest-paid female footballers in the world.

However, in the course of her exchange with PC Stephen Lovell Kerr felt her fame and fortune meant less than her race and gender that night. Officers refused to believe her claims of being “held hostage” in a cab and instead accused her of wrongdoing.

Before Kerr and her partner, Kristie Mewis, arrived at the police station, they described a taxi journey during which Kerr was sick and a dispute began over paying for cleaning. They were left feeling “terrified” for their lives after the driver locked them in as the row escalated and allegedly began speeding and swerving. This led to Mewis smashing a window of the cab in an attempt to escape the situation, although the women did not know that the driver had called the police who told him to drive to Twickenham police station.

When the couple arrived at the station, they described feeling “relieved” when they came into contact with officers. The situation soon went south.

They told officers they felt they had been “held hostage” and had called emergency services while in the taxi because they feared being attacked, but their claims were dismissed. They were told to pay for the damage to the taxi and Lovell said: “Do you think a taxi driver that was going to rape and kill you would drive you to a police station? No.” After this, she called him a “white privileged man”.

Kerr also described feeling “antagonised” by officers and said her treatment was a “racial fucking thing”. She also asked them to “believe women for once” and made several references to Sarah Everard, the woman abducted and murdered by a police officer in London in March 2021. At one point, an officer asked Lovell whether Kerr, Mewis and the taxi driver were all “getting nicked”, to which he responded: “He’s not getting nicked.”

Lovell also called Kerr “little Missy” and said records did not support the couple’s claim that they had tried to call the emergency services while in the taxi. The couple said the call handlers hung up on them, which Lovell said “they wouldn’t do”. In the course of the trial, however, it emerged that the pair did call emergency services and the operator said they would call back. When they did, the couple were in the police station and the call went to voicemail.

Kerr’s lawyer, Grace Forbes, told the court that Kerr and Mewis had described allegations of dangerous driving and false imprisonment against the driver. Despite this, no further inquiries were made into their claims.

At various points in the exchange, Kerr showed Lovell her bank account and made reference to lawyers. Kerr told the court that she tried to make a show of her privilege to make “myself feel protected” because she felt “powerless” in the situation.

It was after Lovell doubted Kerr’s assertion she had called police for a second time that she called him “fucking stupid and white”.

The case is likely to spark a wider debate about free speech and race, particularly around how people of colour can express their opinions and grievances. In the UK, there has been a number of high-profile cases involving people of colour being charged with a racially aggravated public order offence. Kerr, whose father was born in India, identifies as White-Anglo-Indian.

Marieha Hussain, a British Asian woman, was charged with such an offence last May for depicting former UK prime minister Rishi Sunak and former home secretary Suella Braverman as coconuts at a pro-Palestine rally. She was found not guilty months later.

Last March, a Black man was acquitted after being charged with racially aggravated malicious communications for sending a raccoon emoji to a Black Conservative politician on social media.

Unlike in those cases where comments were directed at other people of colour, Kerr, aimed her words at a white man.

Despite mainstream discussion in recent years about race, power and privilege based on skin colour, Kerr’s high-profile trial shows that, in the UK at least, these debates have had little bearing on the law.

Or, as prosecutor Bill Emlyn Jones told the court: “The law does not discriminate between different races when it comes to racist language.”