Bush Rolls Up More Police Support--in Massachusetts

Exercising what has become known as the “tweak factor,” George Bush continued his guerrilla war with Michael S. Dukakis over endorsements by police organizations, staging a quick raid into Massachusetts from Connecticut to pick up the support Friday of two police unions in Dukakis’ state.

The Bush forces, which learned several days ago that the International Brotherhood of Police Officers of Springfield and the Springfield Police Department Supervisors’ Assn. had decided to endorse the vice president’s bid for the presidency, kept word of the trip secret until just hours before the vice president crossed the state’s border.

Catcalls Greet Bush

Nevertheless, several dozen Dukakis supporters showed up in time to keep up a steady pace of catcalls during Bush’s five-minute speech.

On Sept. 22, Bush visited Boston, where the Police Patrolman’s Assn. endorsed his candidacy. Within hours of that visit, the Dukakis forces held a news conference at which a number of police officers--including one from Bush’s home state of Texas--announced their support for the Democratic presidential nominee.

This time, the Dukakis campaign in Connecticut, where Bush grew up, distributed a press release announcing that the 508-member Hartford Police Union endorsed Dukakis for the presidency.

It was a day that drew heavily on law enforcement issues in the Northeast, as the vice president sought platforms to engage in what has become a theme in both the Republican and Democratic campaigns: dueling over which candidate is the tougher on crime issues.

In New Jersey, Bush appeared with Joe Clark, a Paterson, N.J., high school principal who developed a national reputation for his discipline efforts, and the vice president also delivered a lecture on drug abuse to students at Ridgefield Memorial High School in Ridgefield, N.J.

The trip to Massachusetts, which was added to a previously announced stop in West Hartford, Conn., provided a bonus of sorts: Bush’s New England political director, Ron Kaufman, said Dukakis “has made competence an issue and anytime we can prove that people in his state don’t think he’s competent, it’s worthwhile.”

Driving that theme home, Bush, with an array of Springfield police officers standing behind him, declared: “My opponent is out of the mainstream with the crime fighters in his own state.”

And Springfield Police Sgt. Thomas Kelly said: “Our message to America is we cannot take a chance on Michael Dukakis. Those of us who know him best know that Michael Dukakis is soft on crime and soft on drugs.”

At the heart of the police officers’ beef with Dukakis is a Massachusetts program that, until it was tightened, had given murderers furloughs from prison. Other states and the federal Bureau of Prisons also operate furlough programs.

The trip to Springfield was the centerpiece of a day that began in New Jersey with another police endorsement--that of the Paterson Police Benevolent Assn. and the Passaic County sheriff’s officers and correctional officers’ union--and ended with a campaign rally at St. Joseph College in West Hartford.

Meets Catholic Prelate

Bush also met privately with John J. Whealon, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Hartford, who two weeks ago switched his voter registration from Democrat to Republican.

During the trip, Craig Fuller, the vice president’s campaign chief of staff, discussed a report in Friday’s Los Angeles Times that described how Bush, as director of central intelligence in 1976, sought to block a Justice Department investigation of the CIA’s activities in Chile in the early 1970s. The investigation proceeded after Bush’s appeal to the White House to halt the probe was rejected.

Fuller said the account in the newspaper “pretty well depicts what happened and it depicts a proper position for the director of central intelligence to take.”

“He did not want to do anything that would have the appearance of interfering with the investigation,” but he also did not want to do anything that would disclose the sources and methods of CIA operations, Fuller said.

The vice president’s trip to New Jersey followed by a day a Dukakis visit there, at which the Democrat criticized his Republican opponent for not doing enough to protect the environment.

“How my opponent had the nerve to come in yesterday and talk about oceans you can’t swim in,” Bush said. “You try to drink the water in Boston Harbor lately? Don’t do it. It’s bad for your health.”

A month ago, Bush sailed through Boston Harbor to call attention to its polluted condition--and to try to take the wind out of Dukakis’ earlier criticism of the Reagan Administration’s environmental record.

In Paterson, one of the nation’s first industrial cities, where the first Colt revolver was manufactured, Passaic County Sheriff Edwin Englehardt introduced Bush to a crowd gathered in front of the city police headquarters, saying: “We don’t want a man in the White House who is a sympathizer or card-carrying member of the ACLU. They’re against everything in America that is right.”

Dukakis’ membership in the American Civil Liberties Union is an almost daily theme in Bush’s campaign speeches.