Examination of Witnesses (Questions 115
- 119)
TUESDAY 11 MARCH 2008
MR BRIAN
PADDICK
Q115 Chairman: Thank you very much
for coming. I will not start with my long introduction as to why
we are here, because I saw you sitting at an earlier session and
we do also have the Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority
and the Deputy Commissioner to follow you this morning. How do
you see the challenges of the next few years for London? Do you
think that London has the capacity, or the capability, of dealing
with counter-terrorism, the forthcoming Olympics and the overall
level of crime?
Mr Paddick: I think if there is
a change in approach from the police in London then the capacity
might be sufficient if there is additional administrative support.
At the moment, as has been discussed this morning, we have PCSOs
who spend 75% of their time out on the streets; we have fully
fledged police officers who are spending 30-40% of their time
in the police station. If we were able to provide sufficient administrative
support in the police station, we could actually release a lot
of those police officers' time to increase their visible presence
on the street. PCSOs do have their uses and, unlike Mr Johnson,
in fact there are different sorts of PCSOs already existing. There
are security PCSOs, there are transport PCSOs as well as community
PCSOs, so they have their uses, but they are not as useful as
fully fledged police officers. Indeed, when we are talking about
counter-terrorism, whether we are talking about gun and knife
crime, the use that PCSOs have is very limited. Administrative
support to release police officer time out on to the street is
one way of doing it; the other is to get back to the essence of
British policing, which is policing by consent.
Q116 Chairman: You know that Sir
Ronnie Flanagan has produced his report, and you have obviously
come across him in your previous life as a borough commander.
Do you think there is too much emphasis on additional police officers
as opposed to the better use of police officers, which is what
Sir Ronnie was talking about?
Mr Paddick: I think we can make
police officers far more effective in the job they do: we can
raise their moral and motivation, if we get civilian support to
do the mundane paper work for them. For example, if we allow police
officers to radio in or telephone in their crime reports whilst
they are at the scene of a crime to a professional keyboard operator
in the police station, rather than making the police officer go
back to the police station and use two fingers to make up the
crime report.
Q117 Chairman: And when you were
Borough Commander, were you able to properly use the resources
you had, or did you feel there were restrictions coming from the
Home Office and others to prevent you from doing that?
Mr Paddick: The problem with the
Home Office was nationally imposed targets, some of which were
having perverse outcomes. For example, in terms of offences brought
to justice, I am sure the Committee will realise that it is one
point on the score board for a complex case of murder which might
take 18 months to investigate and six months to try in court,
provided there is a conviction that counts as one offence brought
to justice, and a cannabis warning that takes 20 minutes to deal
with on the street which counts as exactly the same under current
Home Office targets. Clearly that is a nonsense, and clearly it
is distorting what the police are concentrating on. If we are
to rebuild that contract between the police and the public, the
police must be free to be able to concentrate on what is most
important to local people.
Q118 Mr Winnick: Recognising, Mr
Paddick, that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are no less
opposed to terrorism than ourselves, you however said that when
you look at the Stop and Search figures under the Terrorism Act
they are massively directed towards Muslims. Is that surprising
any more than when the IRA was conducting its policy of terror
in Britain? Presumably the police were looking for what they considered
to be people?
Mr Paddick: But this is the problem
we have had in the past with the Caribbean community and robbery;
it is the same problem now with terrorism, whether in the past
with Irish terrorism, now with so-called Islamic terrorism, although
I find that term a little contradictory in terms of what the Muslim
faith portrays. The fact is the tiniest minority of Asian people
are involved in terrorism, and therefore for the police to target
Asian-looking people for Stop and Search is a nonsense. We know
from the atrocities that have been carried out in London already
that the bombs that have been used so far have been carried in
large rucksacks, so if there is a particular alert, if there is
particular intelligence that an attack might be imminent, would
it not be more sensible to be stopping and searching people carrying
large rucksacks, rather than people who have a particular ethnic
appearance?
Q119 Mr Winnick: Did you give that
advice when you were a senior commander in the Metropolitan Police?
Mr Paddick: I even submitted a
12-page report on how Stop and Search could be made far more accurate
and far less discriminatory. It never got past my boss and was
never considered by the Commissioner and his top team because
any report considered by them has to go through your boss.
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