Dalston councillor urges London mayor to push for fairer policing after deputy mayor resigns

Dalston councillor and London Assembly Member Zoë Garbett

Cllr Zoë Garbett AM has called on Sadiq Khan to ensure his pick for City Hall’s next policing chief prioritises a fairer force – after Sophie Linden resigned the post yesterday.

Garbett, a Green councillor for Dalston and a London Assembly Member, thanked Linden for her “diligent” service but emphasised the need for her replacement to “focus on crime prevention”.

She told Khan: “This is a real opportunity to heed the lessons learned from the many inquiries, surveys, and hearings during your mayoral tenure, particularly in addressing violence against women and girls, and set London on a path toward a more just policing era.”

Linden, who spent 10 years as a Labour councillor in Hackney up until 2016, quit as deputy mayor for policing and crime to take up a new role at the Ministry of Justice.

She will become a senior adviser to Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood.

Linden’s tenure at City Hall has been marked by serious challenges to policing in London, notably the 2021 murder of Sarah Everard by a then serving constable, Wayne Couzens.

The findings of the subsequent Casey Review into Everard’s murder concluded that the Metropolitan Police was”institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic”.

Linden later admitted not enough progress had been made in reforming the capital’s police force, and that this would “take a long time”.

An inspectorate report this summer also found the Met was failing in almost all areas, with “inconsistent” management of sex offenders.

Former City Hall policing boss Sophie Linden. Photograph: Hackney Council

Garbett, who ran for Mayor of London earlier this year, criticised the recent announcement of the Met’s ‘Race Action Plan’, which promised a communities-first, frontline-focused policing model.

She said she was “deeply concerned that it has taken the Met almost two years to take a stand against racism after Baroness Casey’s initial report”.

“Additionally, I fear that this new plan fails to address the most important demands of Londoners.

“The data is clear. Londoners do not want safer strip-searching policies for children – they want to prohibit strip-searching of all children.

“Overcoming the entrenched racism in the Met will require much more than just a shiny press release.”

A recent policing shake-up in Hackney echoes Garbett’s concerns.

In September, the Met announced it would overhaul its policing strategy in the borough – nearly four years after the notorious Child Q scandal.

Police were investigated after a Black teenage girl, wrongly accused of cannabis possession, was strip-searched at school in December 2020.

It resulted in the girl, known as Child Q, taking legal action against both the Met and the school.

A reform of safer schools partnerships (SSPs) has ensued, with police stating last month that officers stationed inside Hackney’s schools would now “avoid non-criminal or minor issues affecting young people”.

A 2022 report into the Child Q incident found the search of the 15-year-old by a police officer at a secondary school in the borough to be unjustified, and ruled that racism was “likely” to have been a factor.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan praised Linden for being tough on crime while “tackling its causes head-on” in advocating a public health approach to crime in the capital—something Hackney’s Green Party has also championed.

Garbett and fellow Green councillor Alastair Binnie-Lubbock recently highlighted the need for drug consumption rooms to be piloted to tackle substance misuse, following recommendations made to City Hall’s health committee in 2022.