MOST SERIOUS OVERALL CRIMES ARE DOWN, BUT MURDERS ARE UP BY 24%

Police Commissioner Howard Safir yesterday defended spending $24 million on
overtime for a new anti-drug initiative, saying the additional money was
needed to confront narcotics trafficking that had helped fuel a surge in
homicides.

Although overall crime is down 8 percent this year, Mr. Safir told city
lawmakers at a budget hearing, murders are up 24 percent, a sizable
increase that continues a trend from last year, the first year in nine in
which murders rose. Last year, the murder rate was up 6 percent.

Many of the 148 murders recorded so far this year were drug-related, Mr.
Safir told the City Council's Public Safety Committee, and one of the most
effective ways to curb the problem, he said, is a new initiative that is
coordinating police sweeps in areas with established drug problems.

The program, known as Operation Condor, has placed an additional 500
narcotics officers on patrol each day, working extra tours on overtime to
focus on low-level dealers who haunt some neighborhoods. Mr. Safir said the
program had produced 18,000 arrests in less than two months.

But the $24 million price of the program is the prime reason police
overtime is expected to top $177 million for the fiscal year that ends in
June, up 5 percent from last year. The budget had allowed for $115 million,
but police overtime routinely runs ahead of the budgeted figure. Last year,
the department spent $168 million on overtime.

Police officials said that a primary reason for attacking narcotics crime
was that drug dealing led to gunplay and other violence. Shooting incidents
are up 13 percent this year.

"As we eliminate drug gangs and drug criminals, there will be fewer people
shooting each other," Mr. Safir said.

Oddly, the murder rate is rising most sharply in the Bronx, the only
borough where it declined last year. There have been 52 murders in the
Bronx this year, up 80 percent from 29 in the same period last year. A
spokesman for the Bronx district attorney's office, Steven Reed, said that
investigators had yet to pinpoint what might have changed so dramatically
in the last year to affect the murder rate. There were 119 murders in the
city as of this time last year.

The murder rate has also increased in the southern half of Queens, the
northern end of Brooklyn and on Staten Island, according to police statistics.

Mr. Safir said that a preliminary analysis of the murders indicated that 84
percent of them occurred indoors and involved people who knew one another.
Often, he said, the people were involved in domestic relationships or drug
disputes.

The chairman of the committee, City Councilman Sheldon S. Leffler, said
that while he was not convinced that the department was efficient in its
overtime spending, it would be premature to criticize Operation Condor, to
which the department is devoting one of every seven of its overtime dollars.

"I am still weighing whether this is worth the money," he said, "but I am
concerned that they went ahead with it without waiting for Council
approval." The spending for the program is now before the Council as a
budget modification.

Joseph P. Wuensch, the department's deputy commissioner for management and
budget, said police officials saw major crime decreases in several
categories soon after Operation Condor began in January.

He acknowledged, however, that, as overall crime continued to fall, to
continue the decline is "getting more and more difficult to do."

Police officials said another factor in the overtime increase this fiscal
year was the $6 million spent on Year 2000 celebrations surrounding New
Year's Day.