HE'S OUR KIND OF COP

What are the qualities we would all look for in a senior police
officer? The list could go on for ever, but fairly high up it would
come determination to keep the public safe. Ingenuity and a
willingness to find out what works would probably also feature near
the top. A good policeman is seldom thought to be one who hopes that
his uniform, combined with the size of his boots, will inspire
sufficient respect to do his job for him.

A more imaginative police force isn't merely the ambition of some
liberal minority. The Sun's white van man can usually be relied on to
express the view that police should "live in the real world", and
nothing winds most people up more than an encounter with a pedantic
police officer. The letter of the law, when applied to one's own
circumstances, suddenly becomes not so much a sacred principle as a
nuisance; the virtues of discretion and common sense, on the other
hand, are much admired on such occasions. By almost universal
account, what we want are bright officers who can think for
themselves. Few these days would disagree - just as few would call
for a force that glaringly failed to reflect the population we pay it
to police.

So what amazing good fortune for us, you would think, to have a man
such as Commander Brian Paddick in the job. Here's an officer so
dedicated to his work, so engaged with the "real world", that in his
free time he offered his most experimental thoughts about policing
and anarchy to a website. He introduced a pragmatic pilot scheme
regarding cannabis possession, and risked his reputation to tell
candid truths about the policing priorities of different drugs. He is
openly gay.

And now, we learn, he put his own money where his mouth was. Finding
himself in love with a cannabis smoker, Paddick didn't arrest his
boyfriend or kick him out to protect himself. He admits he did what
every police officer I have ever known opts to do - which is, very
sensibly, nothing. A triumph, then, of the sort of approach we admire.

Apparently not. "Gay supercop drugs and sex shame", according to
yesterday's Sunday People. The Mail on Sunday called for his
resignation. Both papers published a stream of other allegations,
made by the painfully embittered ex-boyfriend, ranging from casual
sex on the Gatwick Express, to having a puff himself. Paddick denies
them all. Apart from the last, most would be irrelevant anyway - and
yet the Mail may now be horribly right to think his position has
become "untenable". There is a credible risk that Paddick could lose
his job - precisely for personifying the ideal police officer we all
claim to want.

If Paddick goes, it will officially be for breaking the law by
letting someone smoke cannabis in his home. That, in theory, is the
media's only objection. But the weekend's headlines all started with
the word "gay", and his "extravagant promiscuity" - not to mention
his taste for Clinique - enjoyed just as much attention as any
criminal allegations. Like pragmatic policing, homosexuality as an
idea may have become acceptable, and homophobia disgraceful as an
idea . But what we say in public turns out not to be entirely
reliable in real life.

Yesterday's News of the World was brimming with letters
congratulating Pop Idol Will Young - and, by extension, the News of
the World - for coming out to the tabloid the previous week. Modern
mainstream culture wouldn't dream of holding it against the lovely
young lad. And yet Frank Skinner and David Baddiel (who would
consider themselves closer to Ben Elton than Bernard Manning) felt it
was fine to snigger and crack strange, puerile jokes on their show
last week.

Respectable comedians no longer wish to look homophobic. They
couldn't afford to, even if they thought that's what they were, and
they would be more likely to find the very suggestion absurd. And
yet, Skinner wondered aloud whether being gay made Will a hypocrite,
and would cause "a problem". Like, would fans be all right about him
singing "I love you girl", when ... well, obviously he didn't?

If Will got a nasty surprise hearing that, it would be nothing to the
shock Gavyn Davies received for stating an innocuous and self-evident
opinion that is universally shared. That the BBC is dominated by the
interests of the white, middle class and middle aged, etc, is
perfectly obvious. Who would disagree? That it should serve all its
licence payers is similarly unarguable. But when Gavyn Davies simply
said as much, the statement was taken to expose him as a
self-loathing, posturing hypocrite.

What all three men did was tell truths we claim to believe in. How
curious that they, rather than we, should be the ones charged with
hypocrisy.