N.Y. Activist Hopes to Put National Police Corps on the Streets : Adam Walinsky’s plan calls for college students to repay federal aid with four years of service in law enforcement.

When President Clinton last week challenged “a new generation of young Americans to a season of service,” there was perhaps no more avid listener than longtime New York lawyer and activist Adam Walinsky. For more than two decades, Walinsky has crusaded for establishment of a national police corps, made up of college students , to strengthen law enforcement. Walinsky, 56, once a top adviser to the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy , outlined his vision in a conversation with Times New York Bureau Chief John J. Goldman :

Question: How does the police corps work?

Answer: It’s very simple, it works exactly like the ROTC has always worked. Young people wanting to go to college or those already in college would receive up to $10,000 a year in scholarship assistance from the federal government. In return, they would pledge to serve four years with their police department following graduation. . . . The police department and the locality have to make the commitment that they’re going to hire these people.

*

Q: How many people will eventually serve in the corps?

A: The bill that passed Congress in the last session . . . would have provided for up to 20,000 seniors in each graduating class. So what you have then is 20,000 new people being graduated into the police ranks every year; eventually, on their four-year commitment, you’ll have roughly 80,000 serving at once.

*

Q: What happened to the bill?

A: President (George) Bush threatened to veto the entire crime bill, not because of the police corps but because of other provisions, and so it stalled. . . . We have every indication that this year it will pass.

*

Q: Have you spoken with President Clinton about the police corps?

A: Yes, when he was still governor of Arkansas. At that time, he saw what the merits were. He understood it right away. He had his staff look at it and then he accepted my invitation . . . to serve on the national committee for the police corps.

*

Q: He advocated the police corps during the campaign. What have you heard?

A: I know it (was) under active study in the transition, and they’ve got people writing reports on it and looking at it. What I’ve told them is that I believe that it would get support right across the board from conservatives, liberals, Republicans and Democrats in Congress. This bill can pass very early in the Administration, and it could be a great start for them. It’s not just in the notion of national service and young people acting in the service of the country, but more important (it’s) a start to get a handle on what I believe is the most serious threat domestically that the country has faced perhaps since the Civil War.

*

Q: What is the rationale behind the police corps?

A: The police corps starts from the premise that we have a national crisis of violence and disorder (that) is getting dramatically worse with every passing year. The corps is an attempt to mobilize the talents and energies which we have always depended on at times of national crises. Always before when we’ve had a war or a challenge to the very existence of the country, we’ve engaged the best talents of our most committed young people.

We need to deal with the problem of violence and with the continuing crisis of race, which is the other face of our crime problem. I have been thinking about and working on this since I first worked for Robert Kennedy when he was in the Senate 35 or 30 years ago. . . . But it was only after the unprecedented wave of violence that washed over the cities in the late ‘70s that I realized that a collapse of urban order and civic order was directly connected to a tremendous shortfall in the strength of the police.

*

Q: How do you sensitize police corps trainees to inner-city problems?

A: I don’t know that the problem is sensitivity; I think there is lots of sensitivity around. I think there is indeed more sensitivity in the form of do-good feelings and sentiments than there is a real commitment to action or . . . a way for people to feel that they can be effective. Many programs now in which people might get engaged with the inner city really have the reality of Band-Aids, and pretty inadequate ones at that. This is different. . . . It’s very straight and direct. Can you make it possible for kids to go to a school without getting shot? Can you make it possible for old people to go to community meetings? Can you help a community to begin to knit together the bonds that have been dissolved by this unprecedented wave of crime?

*

Q: What about criticism that we don’t really need more police as much as we should be attacking the root causes of crime and poverty?

A: John Lewis (Democratic U.S. Representative from Georgia) is the head of the Congressional Black Caucus. He says poverty is no longer causing crime. Crime is causing poverty, and it is the most significant cause of poverty today. No further answer is required.

*

Q: Will the police corps be training future leaders?

A: I think the people who go into the police corps are going to get the best education that we can give them. First, they’re going to get the education of a college, and since they are going to be highly selected and competitively selected on the basis of merit, intelligence, commitment to the country, I believe that they are going to be really outstanding people, just the way that the candidates for the (military) academies have always been. Second, they’re going to be thoroughly trained. Third, they’re going to get the training and the education of the actual time on the job.

*

Q: Critics say that after three years a cop really is just getting to know the job.

A: It’s certainly true that officers learn more the longer they’re on a job. On the other hand, young officers in fact make way over their share of arrests. They tend to be very active and energetic and enthusiastic. . . . There are two curves, one is a curve of experience, which goes up with time on the job. The other is a curve of enthusiasm, which tends to go down. . . . I think there is a limit of how many years we can really ask a human being to go running down some of these alleys, not knowing where the shots are coming from and bearing all of the difficulties of working in what is often a very hostile atmosphere.

*

Q: How do you know cities are going to pay to hire police corps graduates?

A: A lot of cities have begun to realize they have to make the sacrifice to pay for the cops. . . . In New York City, they passed a special tax specifically earmarked to pay for 3,000 more cops. In Houston, the new mayor, Bob Lanier, made a special pledge and they got the money together to expand police overtime enormously. You had a referendum in Los Angeles (in which) 63% of the voters said that they would pay a new additional tax on their houses in order to pay for a thousand new cops. So it seems to me . . . people are willing to spend (money) on public safety.

Is the alternative to go on locking car doors every time you drive to your mother’s house? Is the alternative, as so many people are doing, spending . . . thousands of dollars on home entertainment centers because people don’t like the discomfort of going out at night? Is the alternative continuing to turn on the local news to watch a constant blood bath? All of these things are completely unacceptable. This is a great country, but it’s one that was founded on courage and self-respect--not on hiding in holes, figuring out new ways to lock up your house and alarm your car.

*

Q: You’ve been lobbying for the police corps for a long time. Do you ever get discouraged?

A: Yes, many times.

*

Q: What keeps you going?

A: The morning paper. All you have to do, it seems to me, is pick up the morning paper or watch the evening news, to see the catalogue of horrors that we have in every major city. . . . We have no alternative; we must mobilize.

Times researcher Audrey Britton contributed to this story.