POLICE LOSE RESOURCES TO WAR ON TERROR

DANVERS-- The war on terrorism is making it tougher to conduct the
war on crime, expected to get more difficult in the near future with
an influx of cheap heroin from Afghanistan, Massachusetts prosecutors
said yesterday.

Essex District Attorney Kevin Burke said his office is spending more
time prosecuting hate crimes against immigrants while bracing for the
flood of heroin.

At the same time, fewer state police are available to solve murders
because they're guarding bridges and reservoirs from terrorist
attacks, he said.

"We've got guys guarding overpasses and bridges so the drug dealers
can get from point to point safely," Burke said.

The state's budget crisis will force prosecutors to cut back even
further -- on drug prevention and investigations, and on domestic
violence and sexual abuse prosecutions, they said at a meeting of the
District Attorneys Association yesterday.

"We can't send people to DARE graduations, we can't send people to
community-based interventions, we can't send people out to do
training," Berkshire District Attorney Gerard Downing said. "You can
only stretch them so far." He expects $300,000 to be cut from his
$2.3 million budget.

The state is facing a $1 billion budget deficit because of an income
tax cut and falling tax revenues.

Burke, who expects a 15 percent cut in his $2.3 million budget, said
a glut of heroin on the street will only get worse.

A November report from the Washington-based Center for Defense
Information underscored his fear that the war on drugs may become an
unintended casualty of the anti-terrorism war.

"Since the launching of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan, there have been
reports that, against Taliban edicts, Afghan farmers have once again
begun to prepare the soil for poppy cultivation," the report said.

Reports from Europe "claim that narcotics prices there have been
falling since Sept. 11 -- a possible indication that Afghan drug
dealers are dumping their stockpiles on the drug market to pay for
weapons."

The prosecutors said it's time to reexamine how the state is spending
money on homeland defense.

"If you ask the public now whether they want troopers to investigate
drug crimes or watch every bridge and overpass, maybe they want the
drug crimes investigated," Downing said.

Troopers are guarding a reservoir in Blandford 24 hours a day, seven
days a week, he said.

"Is that a good use of a highly trained state police officer and a
fully equipped cruiser?" he said. "I'm not saying it's wasteful, I
don't have the expertise, but is there another way of doing it?"

"We need to take a deep breath and say 'What do we need and when'?" he said.