BEYOND THE CONFLICT, COMMON GOALS EMERGE

You could almost imagine these guys in a movie, maybe one not
altogether unlike "Crash," the Oscar-winning drama about crime and
race and the limits of our peripheral vision.

There's the tough police chief and the liberal prosecutor, one white
and the other black, a regular guy in his 50s with years on the beat
and pals in high places, alongside a reserved newcomer in his 30s who
got where he is by taking on the insiders. You get the picture right
away. Their conflict would be a great show.

But that's not the whole story, not at all, in this real-life drama
starring Jimmy Tuffey, the Albany police chief, and David Soares, the
Albany County district attorney. These men, like the best-drawn
characters in the movies, are more complex than the storyboards
initially suggest. The collision course they seemed to be on,
full-throttle, has been filling the seats, but there's still time for
a new plot line to emerge, and it's one that would be better for our community.

Each man visited the Times Union editorial board this week -- Tuffey
on Monday afternoon, Soares the next day. Each brought the same maps
of Albany neighborhoods (Tuffey's projected by PowerPoint, Soares'
rolled up and carried by an aide). Each talked about his philosophy
of crime-fighting and how his approach differed from his
predecessor's (Soares has been in his job for 16 months, Tuffey in
his only since December). And they talked about each other.

Mind you, they hadn't talked to each other lately. But each had read
a lot about the other in the paper, and there had been a good deal of
what amounted to glaring across the 10 blocks or so between the
county courthouse on Eagle Street and police headquarters on Henry
Johnson Boulevard. They're suspicious of each other not only because
they come from different worlds, but also in part because of the
company they each keep.

Here's what's surprising: They're closer to singing from the same
sheet than you might think. These guys need to get together. They
could do something. They'll never be Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, or
Belushi and Aykroyd, or even Bush and Cheney. But this isn't
Spider-Man versus the Green Goblin, either.

An editorial board seat offers a great view of the movement of public
ideas and events. Several of us who sat around the table with these
two men saw both a clash of ideas and an opportunity for progress on
the issue that dominates hopes for the future of urban life.

Soares talks of growing up on the streets, of understanding the
neighborhoods where crime breeds. He was born in West Africa and
raised in a working-class neighborhood of Pawtucket, R.I., where a
lot of kids chose drugs and crime instead of turning, as he did, to
study and hard work. He got his job by beating the incumbent
Democrat, who had the support of the area power structure. He is
sometimes aloof, a posture matching his reputation as an
intellectual. His sharp words can sting those who hold the reins of power.

Tuffey was graduating from Albany's Vincentian Institute around the
time Soares was born. He was one of seven kids in an Irish family
that lived in Albany's Park South neighborhood -- one of the areas
targeted now by police for special attention. Before he became chief,
he ran the State Emergency Management Office and the law enforcement
arm of the state Department of Environmental Conservation for Gov.
George Pataki, was chief of police in Cohoes and was a longtime
Albany detective and police union head. Last year he turned down an
offer to join the Bush administration. He's a guy with moxie, who can
quickly turn a stranger into a confidant.

Given where they came from, you could think that the conflict between
these two was foreordained long ago, but it emerged powerfully
earlier this month when Soares attacked U.S. drug policies in a
speech in Vancouver, with language that drew a rebuke from Tuffey,
Albany County Sheriff James Campbell and Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings.
Soares fired back with abandon.

But to think of Soares as the reformer and Tuffey as spear-carrier
for the status quo is to miss half the story. Some of what Soares
advocates is simply sensible street-level enforcement of laws that
enlightened cops and prosecutors have been practicing for a long
time. When you listen closely to Tuffey, you find that he's
disagreeing with Soares less than you might expect. And the new chief
is himself, without any doubt, a guy who wants to change the status quo.

Take, for example, Soares' insistence that low-level drug offenders
need treatment rather than incarceration. Tuffey won't disagree with
that, in general. Soares says law enforcement is wasting its
resources by relentless pursuit of people holding small quantities of
drugs; Tuffey says cops already are making decisions on the street
about what's most important to enforce, and they're spending more
time being proactive and visible in the communities where crime is
most a threat than they are hassling kids smoking reefer on street corners.

It is Soares, the quiet man, whose overheated rhetoric has pushed
this fight to the front page, while Tuffey, a big guy who you figure
could bellow with the best of them, has been restrained in his
comments. There are plenty of signs that Tuffey is striking a more
independent course from Jennings than any of the four chiefs Jennings
has previously appointed during his dozen years in office.

Soares figures that Jennings and the Democratic establishment are
already aiming at taking him down in the 2008 election. That could be
true, but it's also possible that a party might align behind a
successful reformer with a record of accomplishment. After all,
that's how Jennings, once an insurgent, became his party's boss.

And, significantly, Tuffey is not a proxy for the mayor. There's a
difference between a political battle and a fight to rid the streets
of crime, and it is the latter that must occupy the district attorney
and the police chief. The political establishment may be blocking the
continuing reform in drug laws that Soares wants -- and which voters
seemed to embrace by electing him -- but that's not the chief's bailiwick.

What a seat on the editorial board revealed this week is two public
servants passionate about their jobs, determined to make Albany
better for its citizens. Two very different individuals, that is,
seeming to talk past each other. Two men who need to sit in the same
room to produce something that makes sense to those of us watching.
We're all hoping for a good ending.