Pubdate: Tue, 19 Mar 2002
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2002 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Decca Aitkenhead

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.
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MAP posted-by: Josh