York City Police

NEW YORK -- Intent on preventing any outbreaks of violence, the New York City Police Department intends to saturate the site of today's planned rally in Harlem with as many as 250 officers along each of the six blocks set aside for the event.And, officials said, they will clear the streets promptly at the demonstration's court-ordered finish at 4 p.m., whether the event -- being billed as the Million Youth March -- has ended or not."I'm in charge," Police Commissioner Howard Safir declared on the eve of the rally being led by Khallid Abdul Muhammad, who has warned that he will bring gangs to the event.

Because the officers all drive white patrol cars and wear blue uniforms, New York City residents might not notice that some of the police patrolling the city are from Anne Arundel County. But Anne Arundel County police who leave this morning for the terrorism-torn city are expecting to see a big difference between their hometown turf and the temporary assignment in New York. Eighteen officers who normally patrol strip shopping malls and suburban housing complexes will work among the skyscrapers and tenements for three nights.

A convicted murderer, who less than 24 hours earlier had escaped from a Maryland pre-release program, has been charged with the rape of a 14-year-old girl in New York City, authorities said.Garson Jackson, arrested in Manhattan yesterday with two other men, walked away Tuesday from the minimum-security Southern Maryland Pre-release Unit in Charles County. Jackson, who is 42 and from Dundalk, escaped after serving 24 years of a life prison term for the 1967 rape and fatal stabbing of a Baltimore County woman.

Another sign of the mayor's mismanagement With the firing of Police Commissioner Kevin P. Clark, Mayor Martin O'Malley has taken his inept management of Baltimore city government to a whole new level ("O'Malley fires Baltimore police commissioner," Nov. 11). Mr. O'Malley's infatuation with New York City police officials has burned him twice now. However, his failure to investigate Commissioner Clark's background is only one example of the mayor's mishandling of city affairs in general.

Serious and violent crime dropped in the first half of last year, continuing a pattern that began five years ago, according to statistics to be released today by the FBI. The five-year decline is the longest in 25 years.The preliminary figures, based on information reported to the FBI by local police departments, showed that the national crime rate decreased 3 percent in the first six months of 1996, led by a 7 percent drop in murders.The news was greeted with applause by experts, many of whom have been reluctant until now to believe that the drop in crime figures was more than a short-term statistical aberration.

For Louis R. Anemone, the former New York City Police Department official who orchestrated airlifts atop the World Trade Center after the 1993 bombing there, the most valuable tool is speed. It can make the difference between casualties and survivors in the fight against terrorism, he said. "Time is a luxury in this particular business. It's one you really can't afford," Anemone said in an interview. "You have to try to get everyone to the highest level of readiness as quickly as they can."

A quickly planned but pervasive fund-raiser for the families of New York City police officers and firefighters who died in the World Trade Center netted more than $146,000 - the largest sum anyone could remember from that kind of fund-raiser, Howard County officials say. Within 10 days of the Sept. 11 attacks, Howard County firefighters and police officers had organized and executed a weekend-long Fill the Boot campaign and planned several other money-generating events. "We quickly realized New York was really going to need some financial assistance," said Michael Rund, president of Howard County Professional Firefighters Association.

Mayor Martin O'Malley fired his police commissioner yesterday morning, abruptly ending his public support of Kevin P. Clark and asserting that the domestic violence allegations made against the commissioner, although unsubstantiated, were proving a distraction to fighting crime. The move ends the 21-month tenure of the former New York City police commander, who focused on clearing street corners of drug dealers and reducing violent crime but saw Baltimore's annual homicide rate climb last year for the first time since O'Malley took office in 1999.

WASHINGTON -- Declaring police violence an epidemic that has reached every city in America, thousands of protesters marched at the Capitol yesterday to demand that law enforcement officials stop brutalizing crime suspects.In speeches, chants, raps and poems, protesters denounced police tactics that they compared to human rights abuses and ethnic brutality around the world."You can't preach morality in Yugoslavia and ignore immorality in Philadelphia," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, a New York City-based activist who has galvanized weeks of protests there over the recent killing of an unarmed African immigrant.