New survey data spotlights Londoners’ growing concerns over the number of Met Police officers in schools

Some secondary school students in uniform — Photo: RADAR

In new data, YouGov’s December 2023 polling shows that only 30 per cent of respondents think that Metropolitan Police Officers should be stationed in secondary schools, while 55 per cent of respondents think there should not be any at all. This compares to 75 per cent who think there should be specialist youth workers in schoolsin the same polling.

Responding to the new polling, Green Party London Assembly Member and Chair of the London Assembly Police and Crime Committee Caroline Russell said: “Schools should be a space for learning and growth, not policing and fear.”

Russell drew attention to the 2022 police misconduct investigation into the strip-searching of a 15 year old black school pupil in 2020. Refrerred to as Child Q in the case, the young person was strip-searched without her parents permission after wrongly being suspected of carrying cannabis.

“On top of the daily problems we know occur when you station Met officers in schools,” said Russell, “the publicity of incidents like Child Q should give every Londoner pause to think what else could be going on, unreported, given the vast power imbalance between police officers and children.”

“This new data should serve as an urgent reminder to the Mayor: Londoners do not accept the status quo when it comes to policing children in our schools.”

Russell also emphasised how questions have been raised for years with the Mayor on the need ascertain the numbers and practices of these officers, a program sanitised under the name “Safer Schools Officers.”

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