CONFRONT REAL ISSUES FACING LAW ENFORCEMENT

In 2004, when the Legislature and the governor reached agreement on
incremental reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, the associations
representing police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys and police
and correction unions were adamantly opposed. Any change in the penal
consequences of nonviolent drug offenses would put New York right up
there with Sodom and Gomorrah.

Almost simultaneously, the voters of Albany County, faced with a
clear choice of candidates for district attorney who represented
polar opposites on drug policy, rejected the champion of the status
quo and elected David Soares -- the advocate for rationalization of
the drug laws.

Soares could just go around talking about reform to sympathetic
audiences. Instead, he has asserted his leadership -- and the voters'
mandate -- by hitting the cops over the head. Now that he's got their
attention, he should seize the opportunity to call that attention to
a fact that faces every law enforcement executive in the nation.

Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina have forced a fundamental reordering
of public security priorities. If ever there was a simple economic
incentive to rethink our reliance on long and expensive prison terms
for nonviolent drug offenders, it is this. Savings there add to the
resources available to protect us from terrorism and disaster.

So Soares has apologized to our law enforcement community. Now it's
time for that community to accept the voters' mandate for change in
the drug laws and to work together to confront the real issues facing
law enforcement.

TERRY O'NEILL

Albany