Hackney Mayoral hopeful Zoë Garbett said the police service should be split up into its component parts following another report finding ‘systemic racism’ in the institution
A Green Party candidate for an East London mayoralty has said it is time to “break up” the Metropolitan Police after an independent review once more found the service had a structural problem with “systemic racism”. Last week (November 7) a report into the Met’s systems, leadership, governance and culture concluded that racial harm was “inevitable” under its current design.
Report author Dr Shereen Daniels found that force and coercive tactics were more likely to be used against black people than white people. The report stated: “Anti-black outcomes in policing are not random. They have been built in. And they have been named, again and again, by families in grief, frontline officers, unions, activists, whistleblowers, campaigners, and formal investigations.”
In the aftermath Green councillor Zoë Garbett, who is standing to seize the Hackney mayoralty from the incumbent Labour mayor next May, called for the Met’s directorates to be separated and “rethink how we keep each other safe”.
Expanding on this, she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS: “[N]ational and specialist functions could be handled by a separate body from local policing, and complaints and discipline overseen independently to rebuild trust. Local policing should answer to local people, with more focus on preventing violence through real investment in youth services and community engagement,” she said.
Cllr Garbett represents Dalston on Hackney Council and is also a Londonwide member of the London Assembly. In August she announced her candidacy for Mayor of Hackney.
Despite the Greens in Hackney only controlling three seats on the Labour-dominated Hackney Council, amid the party’s recent poll surge, Cllr Garbett is understood to be the most likely challenger against incumbent Labour Mayor, Caroline Woodley, at the May 2026 elections.
A vocal critic of the Met, in September Garbett urged for transparency from the police over its response to Baroness Casey’s 2023 review into police misconduct, which similarly found the institution “racist, sexist and homophobic”. She later called on Met Commissioner Mark Rowley to resign after a BBC investigation revealed racism, misogyny and officers bragging about using force.
While not as forthright as her Green opponent, Hackney’s sitting Mayor, Caroline Woodley, joined other London Labour leaders last month in condemning the Met’s “horrifying” and “disgusting” behaviour revealed by the undercover Panorama investigation.
Responding to Dr Daniels’ recent report, Mayor Woodley told the LDRS she found the findings “deeply concerning” and urged Commissioner Rowley to “act with urgency and rigour to deliver real change”.
She added that London Mayor Sadiq Khan was “committed to the systemic and cultural change” needed to confront institutional racism, and pointed to joint work with his office to pilot a new Police Community Scrutiny Panel.
Hackney became the site of police controversy in 2020 following the strip-search of a black teenage girl while she was at school.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct found the two Met officers involved had committed “gross misconduct” but did not find the girl’s race had influenced their conduct – though Mayor Woodley and her cabinet colleagues cast doubt on this verdict.
At least three major independent reports since 1999 have found London’s police force to be institutionally racist.
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