POLICE URGED TO COPY NYPD TACTICS

The head of the New York Police Department yesterday urged Scottish forces
to adopt his hardline tactics against drug dealers and violent criminals.

Howard Safir, the commisssioner of the NYPD, claimed that the
crime-fighting policies pioneered in the city had cut serious crime by
almost a third and murder rates by almost half.

However, critics warned that police tactics such as mass stop-and-search
campaigns, already blamed for alienating many law-abiding New Yorkers, may
not be appropriate or required in Scotland.

Mr Safir's comments came as he arrived in Glasgow to deliver a lecture to
some of Britain's most senior police officers.

The Strathclyde force has already pioneered some New York tactics,
particularly through Operation Spotlight which adopts a similar "zero
tolerance" approach to crime.

However, Nick Fyfe, a senior lecturer in criminology at Strathclyde
University, said: "There are huge dificulties with taking a policing model
and transporting it into a different environment because while it may work
effectively in one, there is absolutely no guarantee it could work in others.

Mr Safir is due to deliver the James Smart Lecture tonight.

The commissioner, who has increased the strength of the NYPD by a third to
40,200 officers, said the "broken windows" crime-fighting model, suggesting
minor offences going unpunished will encourage more serious crimes, could
be used in Scotland. He said: "If you let people get away with minor crimes
you are in effect saying to them it is OK and the next step is they will
commit major crime.

"You also find that some people who commit minor crimes commit major crimes
or have knowledge of them. For instance we arrested a young man recently
for jumping over a subway turnstile. He was fingerprinted and as a result
arrested for two murders."

The police chief said crime could be further reduced by abolishing parole.
"If you get ten years you should serve ten years." he said.

However, Mr Safir is under increasing pressure after the US government
ordered an investigation into an apparent upsurge in police brutality.

Two recent high-profile court cases have cast a shadow on the success. The
first led to two officers being found guilty of assaulting a Haitian
immigrant they had arrested.

Four white officers have gone on trial charged with the killing of an
unarmed black man. The officers allegedly fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo,
19 of which hit him.

Murray Weiss, the criminal justice editor of the New York Post was
yesterday surprised to hear Mr Safir was in Scotland. He said: "The federal
government is currently investigating his police force for brutality, and
this is set against a backdrop of the success of crime figures.

"Police here have become much more aggressive, they are not just sitting on
their hands, watching anymore, but the problem in New York is finding a
balance between successful, aggressive policeing and brutality."

The police commissioner's support for sustained and un-compromising action
against drug dealers was backed by some community groups in Glasgow.

However, Jim Wallace, the deputy first minister questioned the success of
the Spotlight programme in Strathclyde, and said Scots may not accept
similar strategies to those employed in New York. "If police arrest
law-abiding citizens in a stop-and-search programme, they are more likely
to alienate people who would normally support the police." he said.

"This happened with the Spotlight initiative, which was a bit of a sham,
because the procurator-fiscal wasn't prosecuting all the extra arrests."

Professor Alan Miller, the director of the Scottish Human Rights Centre,
said that there were now European legislative requirements that meant US
strategies could not be easily transplanted. He said: "Direct use of US
concepts could be an infringement on the individual's rights and contravene
the European Commission of Human Rights."

However, John Orr, the Chief Constable of Strathclyde, said yesterday that
he believed lessons could be learned from the New York experience. He said
there were "echoes" in Scotland of what had been happening in New York but
added: There are principles that would not be suitable from a Scottish
perspective, but that does not mean we cannot learn from one another."