HOW SMEARS BROUGHT TOP GAY COP TO BRINK OF RUIN

A Long Campaign By Anti-Gay Colleagues Led To The Removal Of Brian Paddick,
But The Community He Led Wants Him Back

Commander Brian Paddick has been accused of visiting gay nightclubs,
flirting with men, wearing Clinique moisturiser and smoking cannabis. Only
one of these things, of course, is actually a crime. And the policeman
denies it.

Yet Paddick risks professional ruin after being removed from his
UKP93,000-a-year post in Lambeth, south London, last Monday. Awaiting an
investigation into claims made by a former boyfriend to the Mail on Sunday
in return for UKP100,000 in cash, he has been posted to 'Territorial
Headquarters', the closest a serving policeman gets to gardening leave.

On Tuesday afternoon, Paddick will sit - with little to do - in his new
office close to London's Victoria Embankment. Tired already of the
blue-grey carpet tiles, frosted glass partitions and empty manilla files,
he will scroll through police notices, the painfully slow computer system
which links all London police officers.

There the commander will see advance notice of a major public meeting in
Brixton, in the heart of his former patch. Normally such gatherings,
convened to condemn a death in police custody or police harassment of young
black men, can lead to ugly confrontations as activists demand the
resignation of the latest police boss unlucky enough to have landed up in
Lambeth.

This week's demonstration will be very different. A rainbow coalition of
residents' groups, community campaigners, local religious leaders and
serving police officers will be demanding instead the reinstatement of the
man who, they claim, has started a beneficent revolution in an area which
once looked perilously close to violent anarchy.

'It's quite extraordinary,' said Harriet Smith, director of Lambeth's Crime
Prevention Trust. 'Everybody in the borough wants him to come back. It's
unprecedented for there to be this level of public support for a police
officer.'

But Paddick, 43, is not the only one embarrassed by his predicament. It
emerged two days after his removal that street crime has plummeted in the
area during the six months that a controversial focus on hard drug dealers
instead of cannabis users was implemented. Arrests for dealing in hard
drugs have gone up. Officers had been saved more than 2,500 hours of paperwork.

And more than 80 per cent of the area's residents told opinion pollsters
they supported the new policy. The pained embarrassment on the face of
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens was all too evident as he
commended the news to his own police authority last Thursday.

Some officers are now asking whether a culture of anti-gay prejudice in the
force has brought Paddick down. Others say the commander is a victim of his
own 'high-handedness' and 'an inadequate appreciation of when to shut up'.

'I met him shortly before he arrived at Lambeth,' said Harriet Smith.
'Frankly, I thought he was a little mad. He said this was his dream job.
When he did get here, he proceeded very methodically. I think he was a tiny
bit naive about some things, thinking he could just transfer what he had
done elsewhere. But he is one of the most radical and innovative police
officers I've ever worked with.

'I rated him very highly. However, he's not one to hide his light under a
bushel. He's determined to get his own way. And he doesn't have a lot of
time for people he doesn't rate intellectually. That said, he's very
supportive of his officers.' That support was not necessarily reciprocated.
Even before his controversial posting, Paddick had been the subject of
complaints. One policewomanhad claimed - the charge was rejected - that
Paddick chose a man for promotion because that officer was gay.

The moaning escalated after Paddick's arrival in Lambeth last February.
Within days, one officer had contacted a journalist alleging that their new
boss had 'visited gay bars'. This insight cannot have taken much forensic
effort as Paddick was, by then, always open about his sexuality if asked.

But there was a 'history' with the conservative CID at Lambeth. Paddick had
worked at Lambeth before, in the early Nineties. 'When Brian moved from
Lambeth to Notting Hill CID in west London seven years ago, he wasn't out
to his colleagues,' reveals a friend. 'It was his first CID job, but
everyone in the CID at Brixton had "warned" their colleagues at Notting
Hill: bad enough a uniformed officer being put in charge of the CID but a
poof as well. . .

'I think it was when he got to Notting Hill, however, that he first
discovered that some ordinary officers could be supportive too. One went
out of his way to say he had worked on a gay murder and had no problem with
it. Another deliberately mentioned that he shared a flat with two lesbians.'

Claims were rehearsed in tabloid newspapers that Paddick had 'flaunted' his
sexuality to colleagues. In fact, it was a senior officer at Notting Hill
who announced it first, at a police quiz night. 'Brian had no choice but to
get on with things and accept that he would be marked out,' said his friend.

The whisperings from disgruntled officers at Lambeth continued into last
summer. Journalists were also informed that Paddick's partner at the time
worked for MI6 and that their relationship imperilled national security.
The man actually worked in a London shop.

Another officer suggested to reporters last May that Paddick was 'visiting
a gay nudist colony' in Ibiza. He was in Brixton at the time. And there is
no gay nudist colony in Ibiza.

Last June, customers were drinking quietly at Brief Encounter, a gay bar in
London's West End where six years earlier Paddick met James Renolleau, now
36, who sold his story to the Mail on Sunday last week. They were
approached by a man holding a photograph of Paddick, asking if they had met
him. They assumed the man - described as 'paunchy and obviously not gay' -
was working for a tabloid newspaper.

Last July gave Paddick's critics their chance. He had pushed ahead with
plans to confiscate cannabis in Lambeth, rather than prosecuting those
caught with it. He argued that the resources freed up, in cash and
staffing, could be used to target dealers in hard drugs responsible for
much of the gun crime and violence on south London streets.

The tabloid press swooped. The 'Camp Commander' was responsible for
allowing drugs to flood the streets. The insinuation that Paddick's
sexuality was part of the controversy was never far from the surface in
papers that referred to a 'limp-wristed' approach to drugs.

Paddick aroused controversy again when he hinted to a House of Commons
select committee last November that seizing small quantities of cannabis
and cocaine was not a top priority. He said it was part of his
already-published strategy. But his lack of sensitivity to the potential
public reaction marked him out again as someone ready to speak with a lack
of caution.

Paddick's participation in an anarchist internet chatroom caused an outcry
last month. He appeared to endorse anarchy, though a closer study of much
of what he had actually said - 'the bottom line is screw the dealers, not
the addicts' was typical - demonstrated more a flair for communicating with
those who don't normally talk to the police than any particular radicalism.

The media vilification continued. The Sun said Paddick brought 'a whole new
meaning to the expression bent copper'. The Daily Mail complained that he
had been spotted in the Shadow Lounge, a gay club in central London. (The
Mail's 'concern' evaporated when it emerged that the Metro, a sister paper,
had booked a Christmas party in the venue.)

And while some claimed to back Paddick in public, a catalogue of leading
police figures have repeatedly undermined him. One of John Stevens's most
senior colleagues reassured a gathering of journalists last spring that
'only the best officers are nowadays involved in investigating police
corruption. They're not chosen on the basis of equal opportunities.' The
implication was clear. Officers from minority groups, such as Paddick, had
won their positions on the basis of tokenism.

Sir David Phillips, chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers,
recommended at a private dinner three months ago that those who wanted to
study an area where crime was 'disproportionately high' should look at
Lambeth. And Fred Broughton, traditionalist chairman of the Police
Federation, complained in January that there had been a rise in serious
crime in Lambeth under Paddick. Broughton alleged that 'crack abusers and
crack dealers', far from being apprehended, were becoming 'more visible and
more active'.

This sudden keenness of others to scrutinise the experiment looks, at the
very least, misguided now that the scheme's success has been confirmed.

Stephen Warwick, of the Lesbian and Gay Police Association, which
represents almost 1,000 officers throughout Britain, said: 'What has
happened to Brian Paddick on lots of levels is a result of homophobia. It's
still institutional in the police. As with institutional racism, you're
made to feel less part of the organisation and less valued as an officer.
It's day to day stuff, but it gets incremental. You're made to feel you
don't count. You're seen as a gay person rather than an individual, so
whenever you change shifts or move workplaces, like Brian, it all comes up
again in a way it wouldn't if you were heterosexual.'

The charge may sting. The Met's treatment of homosexuals has been the
subject of heated controversy since the investigation into the murder of
five gay men in London by Colin Ireland in 1993. Initially, officers
refused even to acknowledge that the victims were gay. Many experts regard
the inquiry as just as flawed as the later investigation into the murder of
black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Recent attempts to win the confidence of homosexual Londoners were
undermined when it emerged that eight gay officers received threatening
letters last year. The letters had been sent through the Met's internal
mail system. Petrol bombs were sent to their homes. The culprits have still
not been identified.

'Sadly, Brian recognises that this is the way the Met is,' says his friend.
'Although there are far fewer prejudiced police officers than there used to
be, they still exist. But he will not let it get to him.'

A senior black police official said: 'There is a moral outrage in the black
community that serious crime hasn't been tackled in the past. Brian Paddick
showed himself prepared to do this. It's not just people who use cannabis
who support him.

'The reactionary elements of the police are circling about him. There'll be
more malicious complaints and smear campaigns, and we all just have to get
used to that. But people want him back.'

Broadcaster Darcus Howe, who lives in Lambeth, sympathises: 'All the talk
in Brixton last Monday among the black population was that whenever a
member of the establishment gives black people a helping hand, the rest of
the establishment close ranks and get rid of him.'

Paddick, meanwhile, awaits investigation by officers from another force.
While he denies ever using cannabis himself, he knows he is vulnerable over
the charge that he was present when Renolleau did so. And he failed to tell
his superiors that when they met, Renolleau was on bail over a minor fraud
inquiry.

Stephen Warwick said: 'If you kept to every requirement in the disciplinary
code, you wouldn't have a private life at all. The man in this case was
never even charged.'

'It's true that if you allow drugs to be taken in your property, you will
be investigated, whatever your rank, but almost anyone else would just be
given a word of advice or a written warning. We await to see how Brian is
treated.'

Tuesday evening's protest meeting will show whether the residents of
Lambeth are so patiently acquiescent.