Brian Paddick: senior police see themselves as untouchable

Today’s Sunday Times carries a report based on a lengthy interview with Liberal Democrat London Mayor candidate Brian Paddick:

SIR IAN BLAIR, the embattled Metropolitan police commissioner, has been further undermined by claims that his force has become arrogant with power and that a group of senior officers see themselves as “untouchable”.

Brian Paddick, the former deputy assistant commissioner who is running for mayor of London, also claims that a senior civil servant, whose investigation of Met expenses has led to one high-profile resignation and two arrests, is regarded as a “hate figure”…

Paddick expects a tough campaign but says he has no fears about his past being raked over. “My skeletons and I have been out of the closet for some time.” However, he is adamant that his long-term partner, a civil engineer, will not feature in the campaign. Among the early A-list celebrity endorsements for his mayoral campaign is Sir Elton John…

Paddick’s 31 years in the Met mean the Liberal Democrats see him as a key voice on law and order. “I think the police should reflect on their origins and they should be acting as citizens in uniform, doing the things that citizens want them to do and not doing the things that citizens don’t want them to do.”

Paddick feels the police in general, and the Met in particular, now have “ideas above their station”. He puts this down to “a combination of not listening enough to what the communities are saying and listening too much to what their political masters are saying”.

The politicisation of policing, he believes, was apparent in the way Scotland Yard lobbied parliament for an extension of the pre-charge interview time for terrorist suspects. “There are other ways in which the investigation can be assisted. For example, allowing phone tap evidence in court and post-charge questioning in terrorist cases. They are ways without the negative impact on civil liberties and the possible damage to relationships with the Muslim communities as a consequence.”