I can't remember a time when issues of policing were so heavily on the Home Office agenda. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is posing as the ultimate reformer. Whatever he proposes will be tested here in Brixton, which, almost everybody admits, is one of the most difficult areas to police in the country.
I went to see Commander Brian Paddick at Brixton police station, just for a chat. His recent comments on drugs - that the pursuit of the recreational weekend user should not be high on the list of police priorities - hit the headlines rather sharply. I wanted to find out what has moved this reformer. Both he and Blunkett seem to be saying: "We cannot continue in the old way! Something's got to give."
Paddick said that he had been posted to Brixton by his former boss in the Met. (I suspect that such jobs as head of the Lambeth police are not really applied for; rather, it is a matter of heads being hunted.) But he had always wanted the job, ever since he came to Brixton just out of his teens. He does not see it as a career move; he sees himself as a Brixtonian.
He was here during the riots of 1981. He did not think anything was amiss. Then the explosion came. He was on his way to the police station when he saw a gang of youths tearing through buildings on Acre Lane. He took off his uniform and crouched down in his car before speeding away.
He had witnessed that ferocious revolt which said the old was done; something new had to take its place. Paddick set his mind to it. Twelve months at Bramshill College, the training centre for officers, gave him the opportunity to reorganise his ideas.
He loves Brixton and is determined to give the people what they want. Brixtonians do not see marijuana as an issue of importance, so Paddick shapes his policy to suit. At the core of his strategy is the idea that the community should decide.
I was taken aback. Police officers do not behave in this way. And how does this go down with the 1,200 or so officers under Paddick's command?
He says he has a classroom downstairs and conducts what appear to be seminars. He proposes, they respond, hammering out policy along the way. He insists that he is not a man to write memos, shuffling paper from his out-tray to someone else's in-tray. So those at the Police Federation (the rank-and-file trade union) who might oppose most of what Paddick is after would find it difficult to undermine his work from within.
What about those above him? There is some unease, he admits. If you are caught in possession of marijuana in Lambeth, you are not arrested; the drug is seized and you are warned. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner supports this experiment. It is now informal policy in most places, but there has been no clear statement from the top. It seems that Tony Blair has said so far, but no further.
But Paddick does want to go further. Those who use their own money to purchase cocaine and Ecstasy at the weekend ought not to be a police priority, he told a House of Commons select committee. His argument is that the real problem is the chaotic drug user, up for the quick fix, who would rob and plunder to get the money.
Isn't all this to be described as fiddling while Rome is on fire? Is prohibition working? Paddick says not. But he makes a wonderful distinction between "reality and political reality". Until some imaginative home secretary comes along and legalises it all, Paddick, with a limited number of men and an equally limited budget, has to cope with things as they are.
We will be hearing much more from Paddick. And, by the way, a local survey reveals that only 8 per cent of Brixtonians now think that police harassment is an issue. I remember the days when it was 88 per cent.
