Pubdate: 102797 Source: Orange County Register Section: news, page 11 Contact: FOX BUTTERFIELDThe New York Times CRIME: Better police work and longer prison sentences also contributed,a Justice Department report says. At a time when many politicians and lawenforcement officials are saying their innovative police tactics are responsible for the sharp drop in homicide rates over the past five years, a new Justice Department study has found that the most important reason for the decline may be the waning of the crackcocaine epidemic. The Justice Department report, commissioned by Attorney General Janet Reno, acknowledges that improved police work, along with longer prison sentences and improved emergency medical care, have all contributed to the lower homicide rate. But the report suggests that the close link between crack and homicide may be a fundamental dynamic that explains why homicide rates have declined not only in cities such as New York that have instituted aggressive police strategies, but also in Los Angeles, where the police have been demoralized or have not adopted new methods. "What we found is that there was a very strong statistical correlation between changes in crack use in the criminal population and homicide rates," said Jeremy Travis, director of the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department. The study tracked homicide rates and crack use in six cities in 19871993, using data on drug use obtained from the Justice Department's program to test newly arrested criminals for narcotics when they are brought to jail. "In five of the six study communities," the report found, "homicide rates track quite closely with cocaine use levels among the adult male arrestee population." The report said that when homicide rates increased in the mid1980's with the advent of the crack epidemic, "cocainetest positive rates generally increased. Similarly, when homicide rates also generally declined." The report did not address the question of why crack use might drive homicide rates, but experts have suggested that it might be the pharmacological properties of the drug, which creates a brief, intense high, often with feelings of paranoia, or the way crack spawned a new type of drug market, bringing in large numbers of younger dealers who began arming themselves with semiautomatic handguns. The study, which was requested by Reno to try to understand what has led to the drop in homicide rates since 1992, is to be released next month. The cities that were selected were those that showed the clearest patterns in homicide trends, including Detroit and Washington as well as Indianapolis, where crack use and homicide rates have risen dramatically in the 1990s, an exception to the national declines. Some have criticized the new study, saying its sample of cities was too small and did not include some large cities such as New York. Lee Brown, the former police commissioner of New York who is now a candidate for mayor of Houston, commenting on the study's findings, said he believed it was hard to single out any one factor that was responsible for the drop in homicide rates in cities across the nation. "I think it is a combination of factors, from crack going down to community policing to demographics," Brown said.