Panel Backs $4.8-Billion Anti-Crime Bills : Legislation: Package would put 50,000 more police officers on streets. It also increases federal aid for states, cities in dealing with youth violence.

The House Judiciary Committee approved a scaled-down $4.8-billion anti-crime package Thursday designed to put 50,000 more police on the streets and to increase federal aid to help states and cities confront violence by young people.

Five of six bills in the package won quick approval by votes of 34 to 1. The other passed by voice vote, despite Republicans’ protestations that it avoided the tough issues of mandatory sentencing and construction of more prisons.

The six-bill package is scheduled for consideration by the full House early next week and Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.), the committee chairman, said he anticipates that the measures will pass easily under a procedure requiring a two-thirds majority.

At the heart of the package is a down payment on President Clinton’s plan to put 1 million additional police officers on the streets. The measure authorizes $3.4 billion in grants to help cities bolster their police forces over the next six years, although there was no indication how the initiative would be financed.

Other provisions would authorize federal grants for the development of “boot camps” and other alternative means of punishment, alcohol and drug treatment for federal and state prisoners, aid to schools afflicted by violence and aid for local programs designed to curb youth gangs and juvenile drug use.

The lone Republican dissenter, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, called the package “a hollow promise” and added: “There’s not a dime of funding.”

Meanwhile, a House Judiciary subcommittee is expected today to approve a five-day waiting period for buyers of handguns so police can make background checks for criminal records or mental illness.

Although it faces strong opposition from the National Rifle Assn., the bill is expected to be approved by the House this month and sent to the Senate where it also is expected to be considered as a separate measure.

Brooks decided to dismantle the Clinton Administration’s omnibus crime bill and replace it with smaller pieces of legislation because strong opposition to some elements of the larger bill could have doomed the entire effort.

Particularly controversial among Democratic freshmen on the Judiciary Committee and members of the Congressional Black Caucus are provisions that would extend the death penalty to 64 federal crimes and place restrictions on federal court appeals by Death Row inmates.

Defending his decision to split off the relatively non-controversial measures, Brooks said: “I am not willing to see important, innovative crime prevention programs like cops on the beats be deferred at a time when the American public is clamoring for us to provide more protection against violent acts.”

But Republicans complained that their voices would be stifled since they had expected the Senate to amend the crime package to require stiffer sentencing and to multiply the number of federal crimes carrying the death penalty.

*

“This is just the caboose or the cattle car,” said Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), the GOP point man on crime legislation. “We don’t have the engine or the rest of the train.”

“Procedural legerdemain will prevent the House from acting on a meaningful crime bill this year,” added Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.). “House members are locked out of the process.”

Even liberal Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.) objected that the package presented by Brooks is “touching around the edges” of the crime problem. She said that a bill designed to curb violence against women should have been included.