We don't trust our police

Most Londoners feel that their local streets are more dangerous today than they were five years ago.

Only six per cent feel safer walking in their own neighbourhood. This finding emerges from a special survey conducted by political website YouGov for the Evening Standard. The poll also finds that:

? Two in three Londoners back the Government's softer line on cannabis;

? More than one-and-a-half million Londoners do not trust the Metropolitan Police;

? Londoners are lukewarm towards Sir John Stevens, the commissioner of the Met;

? Brian Paddick, the former commander of the Lambeth police district, wins a big vote of confidence from the public.

The poll highlights the scale of the challenge facing Home Secretary David Blunkett and the Met to restore public confidence in their ability to tackle street crime. Growing fear of such crime is prevalent in every social group, but is especially strong among women and the over-60s.

Even Labour voters give the Gover nment's record the thumbs-down, with 50 per cent saying that their local streets are less safe than five years ago, and only 11 per cent saying they are safer.

The biggest single cause of rising street crime is seen as drug dealing, with a total 82 per cent regarding this as a "very big cause" (47 per cent) or "fairly big cause" (35 per cent). However, most Londoners think the best way to tackle the problem is not to impose zero tolerance on all drug dealing, but to draw a clear distinction between the way the law deals with hard and soft drugs.

Sixty-three per cent agree with the Government's proposed "softer" stance on cannabis, with just 25 per cent disagreeing. Only Conservatives and the over-60s, two groups that divide evenly on this issue, are outside this consensus.

Perhaps these figures help explain why Mr Paddick attracts such widespread sympathy, following allegations by his former partner concerning the use of cannabis when they were in private together.

Only 14 per cent of Londoners think Mr Paddick should be sacked from the Met for failing to report the smoking of cannabis in his presence; 71 per cent disagree-even though he was technically-guilty of failing to report a criminal offence. Most Londoners, it seems, do not think cannabis smoking should be a crime.

They are more evenly divided over whether Mr Paddick should have been removed from Lambeth. Forty per cent agree that in this, the right action was taken, but 44 per cent disagree. And 45 per cent think he was a victim of a gay "witch-hunt", while 31 per cent dispute this assessment.

Labour voters are strongly on his side; 62 per cent think he should have been allowed to stay on in Lambeth, and the same number say he is a gay witchhunt victim.

Views on Sir John Stevens are more mixed. A total 42 per cent think he is doing a "good" (40 per cent) or "excellent" job (two per cent), while 26 per cent say he is doing a "poor" (22 per cent) or "very poor" job (four per cent). But 32 per cent have no views either way. Whereas Mr Paddick's strongest support is among Labour voters, Sir John's popularity is highest with Tory voters, 55 per cent of whom think he is doing well. Among Labour voters the figure falls to 38 per cent.

A large part of Sir John's problem is that he presides over a police force that 30 per cent of Londoners - equivalent to more than one and a half million adults - distrust. True, 69 per cent of Londoners trust the Met to some extent "to do their job well". But this number divides between a mere 17 per cent who trust the force "a lot" and 52 per cent who only trust it "a little".

Curiously, it is not the youngest adult Londoners who trust the Met the least. Under-30s trust it the most, dividing 77-21 per cent in favour of trusting the police at least a little. The over-60s are most likely to distrust the Met; fully 38 per cent of them don't trust the force "much" or "at all" to do its job well.

These figures seem to suggest that the perceived main problem with the Met is not that it is corrupt or racist or oppressive towards young Londoners - the classic complaints of younger adults - but that it is not structured, or resourced, or allowed to be as effective as it should be.

The main conclusion prompted by this poll is that Londoners want a better managed police force concentrating harder on street crime, with innovative commanders such as Mr Paddick given their head, and operating within a more liberal legal framework, especially with regard to cannabis.

? YouGov polled 1,000 Londoners on-line; the raw data was weighted to the adult population of London as a whole