GIULIANI PLEDGES BACKING FOR POLICE PATROL PROGRAM

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani reiterated his support for Operation Condor
yesterday, saying the aggressive program of overtime for drug sweeps and
quality of life patrols would not only be continued, but expanded.

His statement came a day after police officials disclosed that undercover
drug purchase operations and quality of life patrols financed through the
often criticized $55 million program had been suspended for 10 days to
evaluate its effectiveness. Officials had said the program reduced crime and
reversed an increase in the murder rate.

"There was a cutback in Condor for one week to see what the impact would be
and see if there were ways of improving it," the mayor said yesterday
outside the new Fire Department information center in Rockefeller Center.
"And the result is that crime went up by a percent. So Condor was
reinstated, and not only has it been reinstated, it is going to be refunded
and probably increased."

When he made his remarks, the mayor provided no details of his plans for the
expansion of the nine-month-old program, which was started in January to
halt a jump in the murder rate, which at the end of 1999 showed a 6 percent
increase over the previous year. A spokeswoman for the mayor, Sunny Mindel,
did not respond to a request for details.

Police officials said on Wednesday that they had stopped the drug sweeps and
quality of life patrols as part of Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik's
assessment of the department's overall anti-narcotics efforts and the use of
overtime funds. Officials said Mr. Kerik, who took office in August, wanted
to know whether a break in the program would affect the crime rate. In the
last fiscal year, Operation Condor accounted for more than 17 percent of the
department's overtime budget.

Some police officials had said that Commissioner Kerik had questions about
the high percentage of low-level arrests made as part of Operation Condor
and also was concerned that some narcotics detectives were claiming the
overtime despite a lack of productivity.

But yesterday, Mr. Kerik agreed with the mayor that the program had been
effective. "If you look from January on, we took an 8 percent reduction" in
crime, he said in an interview. "Did we put a lot of money out there? Yes.
But for what the city gets back in crime reduction, it's well worth it."

In addition to challenging the program's cost, some senior police officials,
judges and prosecutors have privately questioned the wisdom of using
millions in overtime funds to make the mostly low-level drug arrests
produced by Operation Condor. The program has also been criticized for its
aggressive street enforcement, which community leaders say has further
strained already frayed relations between the police and residents of poor
neighborhoods.

At a committee hearing on Wednesday, several City Council members, including
Phillip Reed, said they had serious questions about whether more funds
should be provided for Condor, which police officials said had cost $55.5
million so far and still has about $8 million budgeted through the end of
November.

"You can't come back and say we are still evaluating, and by the way what we
did just cost $10 million," Mr. Reed told Assistant Chief Charles
Kammerdener, who was testifying. "I don't think we want to give you the PIN
number of our ATM."

But Commissioner Kerik said yesterday that improvements in the city's
quality of life were worth "10 times" the cost of Operation Condor. "The
increased tourism - that doesn't happen by accident, it happens because
streets are safer and the environment is safer," he said. "That's as a
result of the initiatives that we put in place. If it takes that extra
funding in Condor to do that, then we're doing it."

The mayor also took issue with an article in The New York Times yesterday
saying the Condor patrols had been suspended for 10 days. Mr. Giuliani said
the program had only been scaled back for a week. But police officials said
yesterday that while they had planned to halt it for only a week, the
Columbus Day holiday and other administrative work delayed the resumption of
patrols until Wednesday.