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Times Online - UK
09 December 2007

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Metropolitan Police, UK

Senior officers at Met ‘untouc

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".

In a wide-ranging interview with The Sunday Times, Paddick says the civil servant, Peter Tickner, a senior auditor at the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), made him aware in 2005 of "a big scandal brewing over the misuse of American Express cards".

Tickner, he says, was concerned that some of the 3,500 specialist detectives issued with the cards realised "the finance department were paying without questioning [their expense claims]". Almost £2m is unaccounted for.

Pressure on Blair to say what he knew and when mounted yesterday after the MPA confirmed that since 2004 the auditor had raised the matter with senior officers and at the Met's management board. Paddick said problems that threatened the reputation of the Met were routinely raised at a "diamond" group meeting of senior officers and at so-called "morning prayers", when some of the same officers met the commissioner. He said there was a group of "untouchables" in the Met whose behaviour was "swept under the carpet".

Tickner, who was hired from the Treasury to clean up the Met's finances, was a problem for this group, Paddick believed. "He is a hate figure among certain senior officers at the Yard because he doesn't differentiate." Drawing comparisons with the furore over the mistaken shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station, Paddick said last night: "Bearing in mind the commissioner didn't know we shot the wrong bloke for 24 hours, bets are off in terms of how much the commissioner should have known as opposed to what he did know [about the expenses problem]."

A Met spokesman said: "The directorate of professional standards will pursue any evidence of dishonesty or misconduct with rigour. It is not possible, at this time, to state precisely the level of inappropriate expenditure or the implications."

Blair and Paddick fell out over the Stockwell killing when Paddick gave a witness statement to a police watchdog undermining his boss and the Met's position on the Menezes shooting. He left the police last year and announced in September his intention to run as the Liberal Democrat candidate for mayor. The incumbent, Ken Livingstone, has not always been an adversary. The mayor came to his defence when in 2002 an ex-boyfriend sold his story to The Mail on Sunday alleging he had frequently smoked cannabis at their home — something Paddick successfully sued over, though he has now sold the serialisation rights for his autobiography to the same newspaper.

Perhaps to the Met's relief, Paddick has had to cut the 150,000-word manuscript for space reasons. There is also a debate looming among his aides about whether, as planned, the book should come out before the April mayoral election.

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.

For the moment, Paddick says he does not need to work because of his "genrous" police pension. He said the donations crisis engulfing the Labour party ensured transparency would trump anonymity in his campaign. "Any sizeable donation I would be seeking to be completely open and transparent about where that money came from with the agreement of the donor and if it means having to give money back then that's what I'll do."

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."

The police, he argues, have enough powers and yet their counter-terrorism performance has been "mixed".

He said: "I think having over 3,000 new criminal offences since this government came to power is breathtaking — and not in a good way."

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Times Online - UK09 December 2007

Senior officers at Met ‘untouc

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Times Online - UK
09 December 2007