It was a drunken night out that ended in an exchange in a south-west London police station. 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.

Related: Sam Kerr trial: conduct of police was ‘completely unacceptable’, defence claims

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.

Kerr and her partner, Kristie Mewis, had been on a night out in London before they hailed a taxi home. The court heard that Kerr had been sick in the cab and a dispute began over paying for cleaning costs.

After this, they claim they were locked in the taxi, which begun speeding and swerving, leaving them feeling “terrified” for their lives. They feared they were being kidnapped or could die in a crash.

The situation soon went south

This led to Mewis smashing the taxi’s window in an attempt to escape. Unbeknownst to the couple, the taxi driver had rung the police during the journey and was told to drive to Twickenham police station.

When the taxi parked outside the station, Kerr crawled out of the broken window and opened the car door from the outside to let Mewis out. The pair approached a marked police car and described feeling “relieved” when they came into contact with officers. The situation soon went south.

After telling officers about their alleged ordeal, their claims were quickly dismissed.

Kerr 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, who was abducted and murdered by a police officer in London in March 2021.

During the exchanges, Lovell called Kerr “little Missy” and 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 “sick” and a “white privileged man”.

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.”

Kerr’s lawyer, Grace Forbes, called the conduct of police and their failure to take the couple’s claims seriously “completely unacceptable”. She said Kerr and Mewis had described allegations of dangerous driving and false imprisonment against the driver. No further inquiries were made into their claims.

On the night, Kerr and Mewis told officers they had called police from inside the taxi. Officers doubted their assertion, saying they had no record of their call. 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.

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” which prompted her arrest. A short while after this, she came into contact with a female officer and broke down sobbing because she felt like “someone was going to finally help us”.

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.”