FOCUS ON TERROR CREATES BURDEN FOR THE POLICE

The recent terrorist attacks are placing an intense burden on police
departments around the country as officers juggle urgent new demands:
responding to hundreds of reports of spilled powder, bolstering security in
public places and even leaving their departments to serve in the military
reserves.

Senior police officials worry that as a result, departments will become
slower in responding to crimes and may not be able to close as many cases.
And with their officers redeployed indefinitely, budgets stretched to the
limit, the economic picture murky and officials concerned that the crime
rate could begin to rise again after a decade of decline, they say they
have had to begin rethinking the very nature of policing.

The shifting demands, for example, may force already understaffed
departments to consider jettisoning crime prevention tactics like community
policing, which have been praised for contributing to the decade-long drop
in crime but require considerable manpower.

And the burden on local law enforcement will grow only heavier if the
Federal Bureau of Investigation proceeds with plans to shed traditional
portfolios like bank robbery and drug trafficking so that it can focus on
fighting terrorism. As it is, the F.B.I. has essentially suspended all but
the highest-priority investigations, federal prosecutors say.

There are no statistics yet on how the war on terror has affected local
policing, but some city departments say they have already experienced
direct side effects. In Philadelphia, for instance, the police
commissioner, John Timoney, attributes some of September's 37 homicides to
the decision to move a number of narcotics detectives back to uniform
street patrols in the city center. More than half of the September killings
were drug-related, Mr. Timoney said. Under normal conditions, he said, he
would have expected about 25 homicides last month.

"The homicides that are most amenable to police prevention are
drug-related," he said, "because there will be a shooting followed by a
retaliatory shooting followed by another retaliatory shooting. So, to the
extent you can get in there and stop it quickly, you may prevent future
shootings of a retaliatory nature."

In Los Angeles, the police department has been overwhelmed by calls about
suspected anthrax powder, each taking several officers away from other
duties for hours at a time. The department received 44 such calls last
Tuesday, all unfounded, and it handled 375 bomb threats and reports between
Sept. 11 and Oct. 10.

"Obviously, if we're getting all these bomb threats and anthrax calls that
we normally wouldn't get," Lt. Horace E. Frank, a department spokesman,
said, "it's going to take us longer to get to other calls."

On the federal level, several prosecutors said it had been hard to find
F.B.I. agents who could be diverted from the terrorism investigations. That
has left investigations suspended and made it all but impossible to start
new ones, the prosecutors said.

"I've got a couple of fraud things that were on track to be indicted in
November," an assistant United States attorney in South Florida said, "and
another case was to have a big search warrant executed in the fall. And
everything just stopped, and we were told we'll revisit it in the new year."

The new demands are not just taking a human toll. In Arkansas, the state
police's bomb-sniffing dog, Nero, has been called to 32 bomb scares since
Sept. 11, more than four times the usual number. "My gosh, they're running
us ragged," Col. Don Melton, the state police commander, said. "If we had
frequent flier miles for our bomb dog he'd be set for life."

Colonel Melton pointed out that his force of 650 officers provides much of
the law enforcement in rural areas. "It's just a tremendous distraction as
well as a drain on existing resources," he said of the constant calls about
suspicious packages and powders. "There is work that's not getting done."

Hardly any city has escaped major costs, and mayors and other local leaders
have begun heavy lobbying for financial help from state and federal
officials. The United States Conference of Mayors projects that its 1,200
member cities will need at least $1.5 billion in the next year to maintain
security at current levels.

Boston estimates that it is spending $100,000 a week on police overtime
alone. Baltimore has had unanticipated costs of $2.6 million since Sept.
11, much of it for police, and city officials expect to spend $9 million by
June 30, the end of the fiscal year. In Atlanta, a City Council member has
proposed paying overtime at time and a half to police officers who have
been on 12-hour shifts and are unable to work second jobs. The plan would
cost the financially strapped city $700,000 a week.

After responding to 150 false alarms about suspicious white powder in the
previous two weeks, city and county officials in Memphis decided to use a
less expensive method of investigating such incidents. By using fewer
officers and less expensive protective suits, which must be discarded after
each use, the governments hope to reduce the cost of each response to $400
from $3,000, said Clinton Buchanan, director of the Memphis-Shelby County
Emergency Management Agency.

At considerable expense, Memphis has also been stationing police officers
at 28 locations considered potential terrorist targets, including its three
Mississippi River bridges. Because so much remains unknown, Mr. Buchanan
said, officials will wait another month or two before assessing potential
long-term costs. "If smallpox comes into play," he said, "we'll be in a
world of trouble."

As time goes by, law enforcement officials clearly will be left to make
difficult choices that pit short-term needs against long-term strategies.
The most painful may involve whether to maintain community policing and
crime prevention tactics that have contributed to a 30 percent decline in
the national crime rate since 1991, according to F.B.I. statistics released
this week. Those techniques often call for officers to be walking beats,
developing sources and attending community meetings rather than responding
to emergency calls.

Chief Gil Kerlikowske of the Seattle Police Department said: "Historically,
every budget cut for the last 25 years has almost always started with crime
prevention, because it's difficult for anyone to evaluate the crime
reduction impact of those programs. But I don't think any of us want to
lose all the gains we've made."

Chuck Wexler, the director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a policy
group in Washington, said police chiefs now must serve both the mayors of
their cities and the president of the United States. "This much we know,"
he said. "It won't be good enough to forget everything we've learned about
crime in the last 10 years. We're going to have to balance the neighborhood
crime need and the national security need."