MUDDYING THE WATERS ON U.S. DRUG PROBLEM

THE realities of American life look entirely different to those who deal
day-to-day with its challenges and those who just pontificate about those
problems.

The pontificators in my world of journalism have been having a field day
speculating about Texas Gov. George W. Bush 's possible use of cocaine
earlier in his life. They are so fascinated by the question that they have
neglected the most basic obligation of our craft - finding the facts and
assessing the evidence. Without any substantiation, the relentless
questioning of the Republican presidential contender is nothing but harassment.

Now, drugs and crime are real problems. But after every pundit has finished
posturing and muddying the waters, it is bracing to hear from people who
actually might know what they're talking about.

One day last month, I sat in a classroom at Catholic University's Columbus
School of Law in Boston, surrounded by police officials and ministers of
inner-city churches who had come together to talk about practical ways they
could cooperate to deal with the plague of drugs and violence in their
communities.

About 50 of them gathered under the auspices of the Police Executive
Research Forum, a 22-year-old foundation - and government-financed private
agency - drawn from cities all across the country. Attorney General Janet
Reno came by to listen to part of the discussion, learning, as I did, from
the street smarts of these people.

Dean Esserman, the police chief of Stamford, Conn., established their
expertise in a lighthearted way. Surveying the roomful of preachers and
cops, he said, "You know, we're two of the few professions that still make
house calls." Then, turning serious, he defined what had really brought them
together: "I'm awfully tired of arresting children, and you must be tired of
going to children's funerals."

The keynote of the program was furnished by three ministers from Boston who
had created the Ten-Point Coalition, a group of black churches that launched
an intensive outreach program to gang members and their families. The Revs.
Jeffrey Brown, Ray Hammond and Roland Robinson and Boston Police
Commissioner Paul Evans described how the partnership of law enforcement and
probation officers, clergy and laymen had dramatically reduced the incidence
of crime and drug - dealing in some of the city's most dangerous neighborhoods.

A "zero-tolerance" policy toward even minor lawbreaking combined with a wide
array of prevention programs, from close monitoring of at-risk youths during
after-school hours to real job-training and placement programs by Boston
businesses, has worked wonders in the community, they said.

But it is no panacea. When the police chiefs of Detroit and Washington,
D.C., said they were skeptical the Boston model could be imported without
change to their cities, the Boston clergymen agreed that it would be folly
to think "one size fits all." They cautioned against grandiose plans. Seek
out a few practical projects and let the process of cooperation evolve, they
said. Expect setbacks.

What was striking was the combination of practicality and fervor in the
discussion, driven by a shared sense that a generation of young people is at
stake. It was a far cry from journalistic cheap-shotting or political
posturing, the staples of the world in which I work most of the time.

There was a palpable sense of reaching out for solutions - a feeling among
the participants that we're all in this together and can learn from each
other. When Reno expressed her concern that today's swelling prison
population inevitably means that in the next few years, unprecedented
numbers of ex-cons will be moving back into their old neighborhoods, with no
certainty that they will not foment a new wave of crime and violence,
creative minds immediately grasped the challenge.

"There needs to be some kind of a re-entry program," the Rev. Brown said,
"that begins a year or 18 months before their release and helps connect them
to resources in the community." The Rev. Winton Hill of Stamford said that
prison chaplains often become mentors to inmates. "They could hook them up
with ministers in the neighborhoods they're going back to, so the same kind
of counseling continues."

And then Benny Napoleon, Detroit's chief of police, asked the question that
ought to be on the minds of lawmakers who soon will be shaping the final
version of the juvenile justice bill, passed in differing forms by the House
and Senate:

"How do we intervene with the 4- or 5-year-old whose dad has disappeared,
whose mother is on drugs and who's being cared for by a grandmother who says
he's too much for her? We seem to be willing to spend anything on jails -
but not on this. And that kid's going to be my problem - and yours."

Broder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter, writes a nationally
syndicated column from Washington, D.C.