Pubdate: Sun, 25 Nov 2001
Source: Observer, The (UK)
Copyright: 2001 The Observer
Contact:  http://www.observer.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/315
Author: Martin Bright

DRUGS BUST-UP AT THE MET

Senior Officers Are At Loggerheads, Should They Pursue Users Or Switch To 
Softly-Softly?

Brian Paddick, the progressive head of Lambeth police, knew he was in 
trouble when he was called to a meeting at Scotland Yard at half past seven 
last Wednesday morning. The commander of one of the most testing boroughs 
in the capital had been summoned to see Assistant Commissioner Mike Todd, 
the tough-talking head of the Metropolitan Police's street policing 
operations and told to explain the extraordinary comments he had made in 
the House of Commons the previous day. Paddick had told the Home Affairs 
Select Committee inquiry into drugs that he did not see the recreational 
weekend use of cannabis or even cocaine and ecstasy as a priority for his 
force, and argued that police time was better spent catching serious 
criminals further up the narcotics chain.

Paddick had already caused considerable controversy for introducing a 
'softly-softly' approach to cannabis possession in his borough by issuing 
cautions rather than arresting people when they were caught with small 
amounts of the drug.

'My view is that there are a whole range of people who buy drugs (not just 
cannabis, but cocaine and ecstasy) with money they have earned 
legitimately,' he told the inquiry. 'They use a small amount of this drug, 
a lot of them just at weekends. It has no adverse effect on the rest of the 
people that they are with. They go back to work on Monday morning and are 
unaffected for the rest of the week.'

His words were careful and considered and marked a sea change in police 
policy towards drugs. The only problem was that Paddick did not have the 
authority to announce the change in policy.

The meeting with Todd was a clash of police cultures. Paddick, 
Oxford-educated and the most senior openly gay officer in the force, 
represents a new breed of fast-track senior officers, hungry for reform and 
open to radical ideas. Todd is a more traditional coppers' copper with a 
taste in old-fashioned street policing, who wears his first-class degree 
from Essex University lightly. He was, for example, in charge of the 
controversial strategy of rounding up demonstrators on Oxford Street during 
this year's May Day anti-capitalist demonstrations.

Todd was furious. He told Paddick that, although he accepted that the 
junior officer was speaking in a personal capacity, his words were in 
direct contradiction to the official line of the Metropolitan Police 
Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, who had just announced a crackdown on 
middle-class cocaine users in the clubs and bars of London's West End.

In a morning that Brian Paddick is likely to remember for some time, he was 
then taken to receive a second carpeting from Stevens himself, who pointed 
out that his job was to uphold Metropolitan Police policy, a position he 
was forced to accept, although he has subsequently told friends that the 
meeting with Stevens ended with the Commissioner telling him to 'keep up 
the good work' in Lambeth.

Scotland Yard then took the extraordinary step of issuing a statement 
officially distancing itself from Paddick's remarks.

One source at the Association of Chief Police Officers said Brian Paddick 
had been 'naive' to think that his comments would go unnoticed by the media 
and unchecked by his superiors. 'Throughout the police service there are 
differences of opinion and ambiguities. This was a personal opinion based 
on his professional experience and he may have thought that was fine. But 
the Commissioner was never likely to see it that way.'

Brian Paddick's comments have uncovered deep police divisions over the 
drugs issue which senior officers are keen to play down. But by the end of 
last week Sir John Stevens had been forced to reprimand a second senior 
officer - this time for going public with his criticism of Commander 
Paddick. In a letter to the Evening Standard Chief Superintendent Simon 
Humphrey, head of the Yard's Vice Squad, wrote: 'I wish to disassociate 
myself and my officers from the widely publicised comments of Commander 
Brian Paddick... he should be reminded that first and foremost Class A 
drugs kill.'

Humphrey's approach is backed by the Police Federation, the union for beat 
officers whose members are said to be angry over Paddick's outspoken 
approach: 'If he wanted to have that conversation, he should have done it 
privately,' said Glen Smythe, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation. 
'Ecstasy is unpredictable and kills without warning. Try justifying that to 
a parent whose child has died. If Commander Paddick does not have enough 
officers to deal with his priorities, he should just say so and lobby for 
more.'

Janet Betts, the mother of Leah, who died after taking ecstasy at her 18th 
birthday party in 1995, delivered a withering attack on Brian Paddick after 
his statement to the Select Committee: 'We seem to be losing sight of the 
big idea that people should not be doing drugs in the first place. I'm sick 
of senior police officers who are just worried about balancing their books. 
They don't give a stuff about the kids on the street.'

But Paddick's supporters claim he is simply being honest about policing 
priorities and saying publicly what many senior officers know to be the 
case. As Andy Hayman, who is responsible for drug policy at Acpo, told The 
Observer, many forces already issue cautions for first-time possession of 
ecstasy and no longer treat it as a Class A drug, such as heroin and 
cocaine. Acpo's own evidence to the Select Committee made it clear that 
they would support the declassification of ecstasy from the top category if 
medical and scientific evidence supported it.

Paddick is said to be 'bullish' about the results of his six-month pilot 
scheme in Lambeth. He argues that a typical arrest takes his officers off 
the streets for five hours, costs UKP10,000 to bring to court and leads to 
an average fine of UKP46. But some officers in his Lambeth force privately 
say that the new system of automatic cautions is just as time-consuming.

Dame Ruth Runciman, whose report on drugs for the Police Foundation in 
March recommended reform of the law on ecstasy and heroin, said Paddick's 
experiment in Lambeth had heralded a revolution in drugs policy. More than 
anything, it had paved the way for David Blunkett's announcement that the 
possession of small amounts of cannabis would no longer be an arrestable 
offence. 'These significant steps mean that we have a real opportunity to 
make our drug laws more credible, proportionate and effective,' she told 
The Observer. She said that her committee had emphasised the importance of 
developing a 'hierarchy of risk' and that, although there were around 20 
deaths a year from ecstasy, this did not compare with the far larger number 
who died from heroin and crack cocaine.

The shift in policy also recognises the importance of the work of academics 
such as Mike Hough, director of the Criminal Policy Research Unit at South 
Bank University, who has been arguing for years that there is no direct 
causal link between drug-taking and crime. 'Accepting the principle in the 
legislation that drugs should be classified according to objective levels 
of risk, I agree that ecstasy should be in a lower class than heroin, and 
cannabis in a lower class than ecstasy.'

Organisations working in the drugs field have called on the police to stop 
fighting among themselves and develop a coherent line consistent with the 
newly liberal atmosphere. Roger Howard of the government-funded drugs 
charity Drugscope said: 'Our own submission to the Home Affairs Select 
Committee recommended policing reforms, so we are extremely happy with what 
has been said by David Blunkett and Brian Paddick.' But he said that Acpo 
should publish its full written submissions to the Runciman report and the 
Select Committee inquiries in an attempt to unify the differing policies on 
drugs arrests by forces across Britain.

For the first time, drugs charities, academic experts, Home Office civil 
servants and the Home Secretary himself all accept the principle that 
Britain's drug laws are ripe for reform. But last week's events demonstrate 
that the faultline between reformers and traditionalists within the police 
force remains the biggest hurdle to genuine change in the one place it 
really matters - the street.
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MAP posted-by: Beth