UNIFORMED OFFICERS TO REPLACE UNDERCOVER DRUG OPERATION THIS WEEKEND

Police officials said yesterday that they would add uniformed patrols this
weekend instead of running an undercover narcotics operation normally
financed with special overtime money. Officials would not specify how they
planned to use the extra uniformed officers, who will be paid with money
earmarked to finance the Operation Condor undercover operation. But there
are several events scheduled for the weekend that are expected to draw large
crowds, including the Hellenic-American Day parade on Sunday, and the
funeral of Patrick Dorismond, the security guard who was shot to death last
week during a scuffle with an undercover police officer.

"This is not a suspension of Condor," said Deputy Chief Thomas Fahey, a
police spokesman. "We have utilized the extra overtime dollars in the past
to staff uniformed details as needed." In addition to the money earmarked
for the Condor program, police officials have overtime money available in
other accounts.

The officials would not discuss security arrangements for the funeral, which
is to be held in Brooklyn and is expected to draw a large contingent of
mourners from the city's Haitian-American community, but the officials said
they did not anticipate that there would be a large police presence at the
funeral.

Mr. Dorismond was shot to death after he and a friend left a bar and were
waiting for a taxi on Eighth Avenue in Midtown.

Investigators are sifting through conflicting accounts of the incident,
which has led to renewed accusations that the police routinely use excessive
force when dealing with black and Hispanic people. Mr. Dorismond was black.
The officer who scuffled with him, Detective Anthony Vasquez, is Hispanic.

Detective Vasquez, who has said through his lawyer that the gun discharged
accidentally, had been posing as a drug buyer when he asked Mr. Dorismond to
sell him marijuana, setting off an argument.

One narcotics supervisor said police officials had canceled the weekend
narcotics operations in part because they wanted to ensure there were no
additional incidents, however minor.

"No one expects an incident," said the supervisor. "But they wanted to make
sure that nothing happened."

Operation Condor is a $24 million initiative that pays for narcotics
officers to work on their normal days off. Police officials have credited
the program with producing 21,445 arrests since it began Jan. 17.

Some of the police officers and detectives who have worked in the
plainclothes narcotics units over the past few weekends will be among those
asked to work in uniform tomorrow and Sunday, officials said.

Detective Vasquez was not working on overtime when the shooting occurred.