POLICE, SCHOOL OFFICIALS, POLITICIANS URGE MORE MONEY TO FIGHT CRIME

SEN. KERREY OF NEBRASKA VISITS FOR NIXON FUND-RAISER

A Hazelwood seventh-grader calls the school "hot line" after seeing another
student use marijuana on the school bus. In Parkway schools, area police
departments provide seven officers to roam the halls and patrol the
grounds. In Normandy, police set up an anti-drug program for local schools.

None of those programs would exist without federal and state anti-crime
money, area police and school officials said Monday in a roundtable meeting
in Clayton with Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon and Sen. Bob Kerrey,
D-Neb.

The local message: Keep the aid coming. The federal money already is
running out from the 1994 anti-crime bill that has given Missouri $18
million so far - some of it going to school-safety programs such as the
extra police patrols. That could mean the end to the seven officers at
Parkway and others assigned to many other area school districts, school and
police officials say.

Nixon's message: that he's more sympathetic than Sen. Christopher "Kit"
Bond, R-Mo., who voted against the 1994 crime bill and who Nixon hopes to
oust in November. As evidence, Nixon's staff cited that vote and a 1996
Bond vote against earmarking $1.79 million for more police.

"He's somebody who's not stood up" to help fight crime, Nixon said after
the roundtable ended. "That's the main reason I'm running."

Missouri's Fraternal Order of Police, which represents about 4,300 Missouri
officers, cites the 1994 crime bill as a key reason it has endorsed Nixon.

Bond's staff replied that he had voted against the final 1994 crime package
because "it was the Democrats' crime bill. Sen. Bond thought it was too
weak," said spokesman David Israelite. For example, he said, Bond wanted
stiffer penalties for violent juveniles.

The 1996 vote involved a proposal to shift the $1.79 million from a
state-controlled anti-crime program, Israelite said. "Bond thought the
money was better spent under state discretion."

Kerrey, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, avoided
entering the debate of who was tougher on crime. "I'm not here to campaign
against Sen. Bond, but to campaign for Jay Nixon," Kerrey said. "Jay's a
terrific crime-fighter and knows how to get the job done."

Kerrey, who is considering running for president in 2000, was the headliner
at a Democratic fund-raiser Sunday night in Springfield, Mo., and at two
Nixon events Monday in St. Louis. "Jay expects to be outspent considerably
by the incumbent, and I'm trying to level the playing field," Kerrey said.

Several of the school officials at Monday's roundtable emphasized they
weren't taking sides in the Bond-Nixon contest, but simply making an appeal
to anyone with power that the federal aid is crucial. "These programs are
expensive but cheaper than the alternative," said James E. Herron,
Parkway's chief of security.

That alternative, said Nixon, is obvious by the numbers. In 1992, Missouri
prisons housed about 11,200 inmates. Now, that number has risen to about
24,000. Missouri's newest prison cost $79 million.