Green Party leader Zack Polanski has finally apologised for endorsing social media criticism of police who risked their lives to arrest the Golders Green terror suspect.
Mr Polanski has been under pressure for more than 24 hours to apologise for sharing a social media post accusing officers of heavy-handedness during the incident on Wednesday.
He has been called out by Met Commissioner Mark Rowley and members of his own party in the wake of an incident which left two Jews with stab wounds.
The head of Scotland Yard has revealed he has met the police officers who arrested Essa Suleiman in north London and they were ‘shaken’ because they feared he may have had a bomb.
Defending their response as perfectly acceptable in the circumstances, and doubling down on his criticism of Polanski, he said: ‘Unless you’ve been in that moment where you’re scared stiff and you’re confronting somebody so dangerous, it’s hard to put yourself in that situation’.
In a statement this afternoon the Green Party leader said: ‘Everyone in leadership has a responsibility for lowering the temperature at a time of such tension, and I apologise for sharing a tweet in haste.
‘Police responses to emergency situations such as these do need later reflection in the right forums, but I accept that social media is not the appropriate channel for doing so.
‘I have invited Mark Rowley to meet with me to discuss the police response and the wider issues raised in his letter.’
Mr Polanski has been under pressure for more than 24 hours to apologise for sharing a social media post accusing officers of heavy-handedness during the incident on Wednesday
Polanski retweeted a post suggesting hero policemen who disarmed the Golders Green terrorist were heavy handed
Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley today said that he will not allow ‘misinformed’ people to ‘undermine’ the hero officers who brought down the Golders Green suspect
Mr Polanski has come under fire from within his own party for endorsing criticism of police who risked their lives to arrest the Golders Green terror suspect.
Anthony Slaughter, the leader of the Welsh Greens, said it had been ‘inappropriate’ for Mr Polanski’s to share a post on X suggesting two officers were guilty of ‘violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head’.
And Shahrar Ali, a former deputy leader of the Greens, went further and told people not to back the party in next Thursday’s local elections amid deepening anger over the Green Party leader’s actions.
‘Zack Polanski and the Green Party are trending for all the wrong reasons. I have consistently warned about his divisive brand of politics from when he first stood for leader last year,’ Mr Ali said.
It is the latest sign of unrest within Green ranks over the leftward tilt of Mr Polanski’s leadership.
Last week MP Ellie Chowns publicly distanced herself from his claim that the UK’s special relationship with Trump’s America is ‘more of a danger than what [Vladimir] Putin is doing in Ukraine’.
