Magnum force is not enough

An unusual series of advertisements is playing on TV in the San Francisco area. Their intention is to "humanise" the police, and to this end they show officers enjoying a variety of off-duty activities around the Bay Area. One ad shows Officer Paula Overend exercising in a park while a narrator speaks of the perils the police face in the field. "These days, Paula faces more danger than she should have to," the voice-over intones. "Her revolver is no match for the automatic guns criminals carry." Then comes the twist. "Help us to arm the force," says the voice and urges viewers to call 1-800 ARM-FORCE with donations to enable the police to buy semi-automatic pistols.

Most police forces find room in their budgets for new guns, but in San Francisco, the city's finest are looking to charity to come up with the cash. The force is seeking donations so that it can switch from standard- issue revolvers to rapid-fire Berettas. The changeover will cost the department $1.3m to equip its 2,100 officers: with budget restrictions, the process was scheduled to take more than four years, but the force found a white knight in the shape of the Downtown Association, a group of concerned city shopkeepers and businessmen that roped in a local ad agency to create the TV ads pro bono and to solicit money from the public. "The merchants have seen that we are outgunned and know that our ability to help them depends on our being better equipped," said Captain Michael Yalon of the city's Southern Station.

The San Francisco force decided semi-automatics were needed after a November 1994 shoot-out with a gunman armed with assault rifles, semi- automatic handguns and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Officer James Guelff, one of the first on the scene, was shot and killed while attempting to reload his six-shooter.

"We feel we need greater firepower," said Barbara Davis, a police spokeswoman. "There is no question the violence on the streets is getting worse and the weapons being used are more dangerous than ever."

But while the department has applauded the fundraising efforts, many officers are embarrassed by the campaign. "I definitely think the department should issue the guns to us," said Paula Overend. "There's no question that a lot of officers don't like this - they feel as though we are going cap in hand to the public."

Overend, like many of her fellow officers, purchased her own semi-automatic long before the November shoot-out. According to the mayor's office, as much as 60 per cent of the force, at a cost of about $1,000 each, bought their own semi-automatic pistols before the department decided a change was needed.

Ironically, as San Francisco is gearing up for heightened street violence, murder rates across the US are falling dramatically. New York and Houston, for example, have seen homicide rates fall for the first six months of the year by almost one-third - handgun deaths in New York have fallen by more than 40 per cent.

In Detroit, long known as the Murder City, homicide is down almost 10 per cent and, if the trend continues, the city will record its lowest number of killings since 1984.

The New York Police Department, which has begun aggressively cracking down on illegal handguns, believes its new approach is largely responsible for the drop in handgun homicides. There are said to be more than two million illegal handguns floating around the city and police have started a programme, focusing on troubled neighbourhoods, of frisking for minor violations such as loud radio playing or public drinking.

Many criminologists remain unconvinced that police tactics account for the decline in murder rates, noting that these statistics tend to ebb and flow over time. "It's like the Dow Jones average," says James Alan Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. "What goes up must come down. Certain cities are winning the battle, but I don't think we have won the war against crime."

Experts warn that a number of factors - such as declining crack cocaine use, a smaller teenage population and economic factors - may account for the precipitous fall. "Police always like to take credit for declines in crime rate but never when it goes up," says Malcolm Klein, a criminal sociologist at the University of Southern California. "But there is no way to separate out the factors that are causing this fall - it could have as much to do with the weather as better policing."

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, where murders are down 11 per cent this year, critics wonder about a possible escalation in firepower on the city's streets. Mayor Frank Jordan, a former police chief, initially warned against issuing semi-automatic weapons for that reason.

Professor Klein believes the new weapons will only worsen the situation for San Francisco police. "It scares the hell out of me," he says. "I think it will make it more dangerous for cops - it will cause an equal and opposite reaction from criminals."