Brian Leonard Paddick, Baron Paddick, is a British life peer and retired police officer. He was the Liberal Democrat candidate for the London mayoral elections of 2008 and of 2012, and until his retirement in May 2007 was a deputy assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police Service.
Paddick joined the Metropolitan Police in 1976. Rising through the ranks, he was appointed the officer in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at Notting Hill in 1995, then returned to New Scotland Yard, first as Superintendent of the Personnel Department in 1996 and then as Chief Superintendent in 1997. In December 2000 he was appointed Police Commander for the London Borough of Lambeth, where he worked until 2002.
In the latter capacity, Paddick attracted controversy by instructing his police officers not to arrest or charge people found with cannabis so that they could focus on crimes that were affecting the quality of life in the borough to a greater extent.
In late 2002, the Crown Prosecution Service decided that no charges would be brought against him in relation to alleged cannabis possession; in December 2003 Paddick and The Mail on Sunday settled legal proceedings brought by him, with the newspaper accepting that a story it had published was false (which had alleged he had used cannabis), apologising, and paying damages.
In April 2005 Paddick took over management of territorial policing across all 32 London boroughs. During the investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) into the wrongful shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Tube station on 22 July 2005, Paddick stated that a member of the private office team of Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had believed the wrong man had been targeted just six hours after the shooting. This allegation was contradicted by New Scotland Yard. On 28 March 2006, Paddick accepted a statement from the Metropolitan Police that it "did not intend to imply" a senior officer had misled the probe into the shooting and that "any misunderstanding is regretted".
However, following the disagreement, Paddick was assigned the position of group director of information management at New Scotland Yard, which he considered a "non-job". He came to accept that his police career was over, and retired from the police force on 31 May 2007. In November 2007, it was announced that Paddick had been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London in the mayoral elections to be held on 1 May 2008. He came third, behind Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone, winning 9.8 per cent of first preference votes.
Paddick was created a life peer in 2013, taking the title Baron Paddick, of Brixton in the London Borough of Lambeth, sitting in the House of Lords for the Liberal Democrats. He became a non-affiliated member of the Lords upon his appointment as a non-executive advisor for the Metropolitan Police in 2023.
