Pubdate: Sat, 16 Sep 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
Contact:  229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036
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Author: William K. Rashbaum

COMMISSIONER TO REVIEW FLOOD OF MINOR NARCOTICS ARRESTS

Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik is conducting an intensive review of 
the Police Department's antidrug efforts, focusing on how tens of millions 
of dollars in overtime are being spent and on the high percentage of minor 
arrests being made by narcotics detectives, according to several senior law 
enforcement officials.

The officials, who are familiar with Mr. Kerik's review, have said he is 
concerned that misdemeanor narcotics arrests outnumber felony arrests by 
three to one, an indication that a large number of people charged with drug 
crimes serve little or no time in jail.

Mr. Kerik, who served in the department as a narcotics detective for four 
years, is also reviewing the process by which investigators in the 
Narcotics Division are promoted to the rank of detective from the rank of 
police officer, the officials said. Mr. Kerik is concerned that under 
current department policy, those who fail to perform and produce are 
promoted alongside those who do.

"He used to be an undercover cop going out to make these kinds of arrests," 
said one senior law enforcement official who has had discussions with Mr. 
Kerik about his review. "Certainly he is aware that the situation is 
different now." The official noted that narcotics enforcement efforts in 
recent years had driven many dealers off the streets and inside buildings, 
but added, "It's hard for him to believe it's so different that the 
productivity is so low when it comes to meaningful arrests."

The official said that Mr. Kerik, who was the commissioner of correction 
overseeing the city's jails before he was named New York City's 40th police 
commissioner in August, saw the flood of misdemeanor narcotics arrests when 
he ran the Department of Correction.

Mr. Kerik has emphasized that he believes a focus on quality-of-life 
offenses has helped win record declines in crime, but the officials 
familiar with his thinking have said he is concerned that some detectives 
are failing to produce higher-quality cases, like arresting drug dealers.

"His question is, are some people making easy, quick, low-level collars 
when they could be making felonies," said another senior law enforcement 
official familiar with the new commissioner's thinking. "So, with a healthy 
level of skepticism, he is reviewing all of this."

The number of misdemeanor narcotics arrests has been increasing for more 
than five years, and many police commanders say that pressure within the 
department to push up arrest numbers has led to a flood of minor drug 
charges. In fact, since 1993, according to the recently released Mayor's 
Management Report, narcotics misdemeanors have climbed 295 percent, while 
narcotics felonies over the same period have decreased 1.1 percent. In 
fiscal 2000, felony arrests for narcotics dropped 10 percent.

The changes over the last year, too, have been substantial. During the 
first six months of this year, Mr. Kerik's predecessor, Howard Safir, 
poured more than $40 million of police overtime into a special 
antinarcotics program called Operation Condor, an effort to turn around the 
city's rising murder rate, which in 1999 and the beginning of this year was 
inching up.

For the first three months of this year, Operation Condor put additional 
undercover narcotics buy-and-bust teams out on the streets in targeted 
neighborhoods. Starting in May, the overtime funds were spent on additional 
uniformed patrols and quality-of-life enforcement.

The result was a significant increase in misdemeanor drug arrests, which 
include charges ranging from marijuana possession and sale to the 
possession of the crack residue that is often found in a crack pipe. In the 
first six months of this year, the police made 60,950 such arrests and 
19,787 felony narcotics arrests, according to statistics from the state 
Division of Criminal Justice Services. During that period in 1999, the 
police drug arrests included 39,260 misdemeanors drug and 21,604 felonies.

Mr. Kerik earlier this week praised Operation Condor but said he was 
reviewing the program. "I'm looking at it," he said in a meeting with 
reporters on Monday. "It's been a good program. It's produced good results. 
How much more do we want to do? Do we want to look at the way it operates? 
Yes. Am I going to do anything with it now? Not now."

Narcotics commanders have said that Mr. Kerik has ordered the department's 
Quality Assurance Division to request a series of documents from each 
borough's Narcotics Division in order to assess the quality of the work 
being done.

One of his concerns is that some detectives were found to be making just a 
few undercover drug buys a month that led to felony arrests, but were 
collecting overtime because of other, low-level arrests.

Commenting on Commissioner Kerik's review, Assistant Chief Michael Tiffany, 
who heads Bronx Narcotics, said: "I think it's wonderful. If you have 
limited resources, we should be focused on the people who are not only 
involved in the narcotics trade, but also the attendant violence."

Several senior officials also pointed to Mr. Kerik's selection last week of 
George F. Brown to head the department's Organized Crime Control Bureau, 
which oversees narcotics, saying the choice was based on Mr. Brown's 
reputation as an aggressive manager.

Mr. Kerik is also seeking to develop management tools to measure the 
productivity of the department's narcotics efforts, matching overtime and 
felony-versus-misdemeanor arrest tallies for different parts of the city, 
according to one senior police official.

The new commissioner hopes to make some changes to the department's 
Compstat process, which tracks some measures of activity, like reported 
crime, arrests, summonses and overtime. But Compstat, unlike his TEAMS 
management program at the Correction Department, does not provide him with 
the wide variety of information he feels would better enable him to make 
the adjustments he needs, the official said.
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