A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

wide open , but there is little chance that a security guard would risk firing a

 gun in a casino crowded with tourists . `` No matter what gets taken in a robbe

ry , it 's not as much as they 'd have to pay if grandma gets shot at the damn s

lot machine , '' said Jim Galipeau , a deputy probation officer in South-Central

 Los Angeles . `` It 's well-known in the gang community that you can go in and 

take anything you want from a Vegas casino as long as you can get out the door .

 ''

 MOSCOW His hair has grown grayer and his face grimmer , but Alexander Rutskoi s

till looks and sounds much as he did last Oct. 3 when he stood on a balcony of t

he Russian White House and exhorted a roiling mob of armed supporters to topple 

President Boris N . Yeltsin . The trademark mustache is still in place under nar

row blue eyes that flick back and forth in humorless scrutiny . And the bitter d

enunciations of Yeltsin and his `` regime of national betrayal '' still fall fro

m his lips like verbal hand grenades . `` This regime is a Fifth Column inside R

ussia , '' Rutskoi told a conference of government opponents Saturday . `` It is

 fulfilling the assignments of the international monetary groups that are reachi

ng for our natural resources . This is a Mafia clan that is running the country 

. '' The conference was a kind of political coming-out party for Rutskoi , the f

ormer fighter jock and defrocked vice president who spent four months in prison 

after breaking with Yeltsin and leading the revolt that ended in a bloody tank a

ssault on the White House last fall . The goal of the gathering was to relaunch 

Rutskoi as a serious political figure by making him the rallying point of a new 

coalition of neo-communists , ultranationalists and other Yeltsin opponents call

ed Accord in the Name of Russia . Only three months ago , when Rutskoi and the o

ther leaders of the October revolt walked out of prison to supporters ' chants o

f `` Rutskoi , president ! '' events appeared to be moving in their direction . 

Russia 's chronic political and economic instability seemed to be undermining Ye

ltsin 's support and paralyzing his will to act , creating an ominous power vacu

um made to order for his most implacable opponents . But since then Yeltsin has 

fought back , moving in a variety of ways to reassert himself as a leader , shor

e up his own support and divide the ranks of his adversaries . As a result , man

y observers believe , the first frail shoots of political stability are sproutin

g in Russia and hard-liners like Rutskoi and his allies have been pushed to the 

fringe , at least for the moment . `` It is a kind of stabilization very tempora

ry , very fragile but nonetheless stabilization , '' says Viktor Kremenyuk , a M

oscow political analyst who is no great fan of Yeltsin 's . `` It gives the gove

rnment some breathing room . '' ( Begin optional trim ) One source of this new s

tability is economic . While Russia 's economy remains in steep decline , its mo

st acute problem runaway inflation has eased considerably recently , dropping fr

om 22 percent in January to 9.7 percent last month . With inflation easing , Yel

tsin moved last week to brake the drop in production by cutting taxes and ending

 government controls on exports . A second source is Yeltsin 's recent burst of 

activity . Russia 's political center of gravity has shifted rightward in recent

 months and the president has moved with it , dropping radical reformers from hi

s Cabinet and projecting an image of toughness against crime , corruption and th

ose who would take advantage of Russia 's troubles . While this shift has worrie

d some foreign leaders , it apparently has helped Yeltsin recapture the support 

of some of the millions of voters who unexpectedly cast ballots for ultranationa

list Vladimir Zhirinovsky in the December parliamentary elections . `` These peo

ple want a strong executive figure , '' says Boris Mikhailov , director of domes

tic political studies at the U.S.-Canada Institute , a Moscow think tank . `` Th

eir vote for Zhirinovsky was a kind of protest vote , not just about economic in

stability but also social instability . I think most of them are moving back tow

ard the president as he becomes tougher on the law-and-order issue . '' Yeltsin 

has also moved to split his opposition by offering a kind of political non-aggre

ssion pact called a treaty on civic accord . While the agreement was derided by 

some as hollow and meaningless , it was signed by a surprisingly wide array of p

oliticians , including Zhirinovsky and parliamentary chairman Ivan Rybkin . Sinc

e then , Rybkin has steered his chamber in a more cooperative direction , despit

e his communist background . Yeltsin believes that the treaty has succeeded in i

solating those adversaries , such as Rutskoi and Communist Party leader Gennady 

Zyuganov , who refused to sign it . `` The forces of the irreconcilable oppositi

on .. . are increasingly becoming a side , marginal phenomenon in Russian politi

cs , '' says Yeltsin 's chief spokesman , Vyacheslav Kostikov . ( End optional t

rim ) An air of lethargy and frustration hung over Saturday 's gathering of hard

-liners , which attracted about 300 people , most of them aging Communists . Sev

eral leaders expected to attend , such as Agrarian Party chief Mikhail Lapshin a

nd jurist Valeri Zorkin , failed to show . Rutskoi complained openly about Yelts

in 's success in stealing the opposition 's issues . After a morning of mostly d

ull speechifying and a closed-door strategy session in the afternoon , the deleg

ates voted to adjourn until fall , when they hope the political situation will b

e more favorable to them . Distributed by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post 

News Service .

 HOUSTON These days , Mayor Bob Lanier sits comfortably in his City Hall office 

, his black Western-style boots plopped on his desk and a stack of charts and gr

aphs in his lap . He likes to talk statistics ; he revels in numbers , and he ca

n spin off facts about Houston as fast as a Texas tornado . But there is one sta

tistic he cherishes most : The city 's overall crime rate has plummeted more tha

n 30 percent since he was elected three years ago . Lanier credits the sharp dec

line not to `` new-fangled ideas '' such as community-based policing but to hund

reds of newly hired police officers whose sole purpose is to go out in uniform e

very day and make arrests . `` I don't look on police officers as social workers

 , '' he said , espousing ideas that run counter to what other big cities , such

 as Los Angeles , are trying to do . `` I don't expect a police officer to go to

 a neighborhood and figure out a drainage problem or a ditch problem . I expect 

him to do police work . '' Down the street at police headquarters , Police Chief

 Sam Nuchia is equally plain-spoken . `` When I took over , '' he said , `` we q

uit using the terminology ` neighborhood-oriented policing . ' Instead , I decla

red that we were going to make it as tough on the criminals as we possibly could

 . '' Just a few years ago , before Lanier and Nuchia moved into their jobs , Ho

uston was considered a model for community policing a concept that has caught on

 in other big cities looking to rebuild public trust in their police departments

 . While Los Angeles is only slowly implementing the program as a result of the 

1991 beating of black motorist Rodney King by white police officers , Houston of

ficials claim to have learned the hard way that the effort never really paid off

 . The perception here is that instead of reducing crime , community policing fu

eled a deep resentment among officers , did little to boost the public 's trust 

of the police and ultimately cost the two biggest champions of the policy the po

lice chief and the mayor their jobs . Houston never had an episode as divisive i

n police-community relations as the King case . But there were past controversie

s nevertheless . A Latino man drowned after he was handcuffed by police and forc

ed to swim in the bayou . A `` throw-down '' weapon was planted on a suspect aft

er he was shot by police . To turn the tide , Houston in 1982 brought in its fir

st outside police chief , who also happened to be its first minority chief , jus

t as Los Angeles did in hiring Willie L. Williams from Philadelphia in 1992 . Le

e P. Brown , who served as Houston 's chief until 1990 , made neighborhood-orien

ted policing a hallmark of his administration . It was designed to make police o

fficers more aware of community concerns , to get them out of the patrol cars an

d into neighborhood meetings and other civic ventures . Proponents say it works 

best when officers walk their beats , meet residents and business owners and enl

ist the public in crime-prevention efforts . Brown was followed by Chief Elizabe

th Watson , a 20-year veteran who stayed until 1992 . She embraced many of Brown

 's programs , but her tenure was troubled . Because of the oil bust in eastern 

Texas and the subsequent economic downturn here , the city under then-Mayor Kath

ryn J. Whitmire put a freeze on the hiring of officers , closed the police acade

my and did not grant police pay raises . The police , in turn , began ridiculing

 neighborhood-oriented policing , saying that its initials actually stood for ``

 Nobody On Patrol . '' Morale sunk and senior officers began leaving for other c

ities where old-fashioned police work was still practiced . When Whitmire lost t

o Lanier in the fall of 1991 , police officers unfurled a banner downtown procla

iming : `` Ding , Dong . The Witch Is Dead . '' `` The previous administration w

as penny-wise and pound-foolish , '' Nuchia said . `` They saved money on the bu

dget , but they also allowed the strength of the department to go down at a time

 when we needed it most . '' Lanier , a wealthy businessman , ran for mayor on a

 promise to beef up the police ranks . `` That was the only campaign issue , '' 

he said . He was elected in November 1991 , and one of his first appointments wa

s Nuchia , then an assistant U.S. attorney who earlier had worked as a junior po

lice administrator in Houston . Almost immediately they froze their predecessors

 ' plans to expand community policing , such as putting officers in `` storefron

t '' substations around the city where they would be more accessible to resident

s . Lanier , in order to reopen the police academy and start hiring officers , s

cuttled a proposed downtown monorail system and saved $ 50 million . `` That was

 a goddamn Tinkertoy , '' he said . He said he picked up another $ 50 million by

 restructuring the city 's debt and saved $ 50 million more by improving its rev

enue-collection system . So far , the department has grown from 3,900 sworn offi

cers to 4,800 . Now Lanier is seeking a four-cent sales tax to boost the force t

o 5,200 officers . From 1991 to today , murder and rape each dropped 15 percent 

, according to police department statistics . Robbery was down 22.5 percent ; th

eft down 25 percent ; burglary down 41.2 percent ; and auto theft down 42.5 perc

ent . Even with aggravated assaults up 12.5 percent ( the only category to see a

 rise ) , the total crime rate dropped 30.3 percent . ( Optional add end ) In ad

dition , police response times to crime scenes shortened , from 6.1 minutes on m

ajor calls to 4.4 minutes . Police morale , meantime , went up , particularly wh

en Lanier and Nuchia found two small pay raises for officers . The chief and the

 mayor suggested that Los Angeles , which appears to be going the opposite direc

tion , also might be better served by increasing its police force before embarki

ng on new community programs . `` I don't want to tell them their business , '' 

Lanier said , `` but I think they have a big problem . They don't have enough po

lice . That 's going to strain any additional duties . It 's going to strain thi

ngs . ''

 BERLIN More than 100 times a minute , 50,000 times a day , a camera shutter cli

cks in a windowless basement in southwest Berlin , capturing on each frame a fra

gment of Germany 's grim past . Thirteen camera operators labor throughout the d

ay on what some here say may be the most ambitious microfilming project ever und

ertaken : the duplication of 75 million pages of Nazi personnel documents stored

 in a former Gestapo eavesdropping post now known as the Berlin Document Center 

. The microfilmers work swiftly because on July 1 the U.S. . State Department in

tends to relinquish custody of the original documents to the German government .

 The duplicates 8 million feet of film on 38,000 rolls will be flown to Washingt

on this summer and deposited in the National Archives . The Justice Department k

eeps the right to unrestricted access to the original files . The pages passing 

beneath the camera lens range from the prosaic to the sinister : Heinrich Himmle

r 's expense accounts ; Nazi Party membership card No. 899,895 , belonging to on

e Adolf Eichmann ; Josef Mengele 's dental records and membership sheet in the N

azi Physicians Professional Association ; Hermann Goering 's suicide notes , scr

ibbled before he swallowed cyanide in 1946 . Among the old files with contempora

ry relevance is that of Erich Priebke , a former SS captain now awaiting extradi

tion in Argentina on charges of helping to murder 335 Italians in Rome 's Adreat

ine Caves in 1944 . Returning the original documents to German custody is anothe

r milestone in the restoration of German sovereignty after a half-century of All

ied occupation . But the proposed transfer has met resistance . Historians , Jew

ish groups and Nazi hunters have bitterly objected to the State Department 's pl

an . They complain that restrictive German privacy laws will hamper access to th

e original documents , that the National Archives duplicates will not be availab

le for at least two years and that surrendering the files is morally wrong . `` 

We bought those documents with the most precious commodity we have : the blood o

f our young boys and the other Allied forces that had to fight the Nazi menace i

n order to liberate the world , '' Elan Steinberg , executive director of the Wo

rld Jewish Congress , said in a telephone interview from New York . `` I 'm remi

nded of the old saying that if it ISn't broke , don't fix it , '' he said . `` T

he Berlin Document Center ISn't broke right now , and I don't know why we 're tr

ying to fix it . '' Rep. Tom Lantos , D-Calif. , who led hearings on the documen

t center last month , has threatened a full debate in Congress `` on Germany 's 

Nazi past '' unless Bonn and the State Department resolve the controversy . Germ

an Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel recently promised Je

wish leaders that rules governing access to the original documents will remain i

n line with U.S. regulations until the National Archives duplicates are ready fo

r viewing . U.S. Embassy officials in Bonn are trying to hammer out the details 

. `` This is something that has been negotiated over quite a long period of time

 and has been reviewed from every angle that I can imagine . When concerns have 

been raised , they 've been reviewed again , '' said Dan Hamilton , policy advis

er to Richard Holbrooke , the U.S. ambassador to Germany . Donald Kobletz , the 

State Department 's lawyer in Berlin in the 1980s and now a private attorney her

e , said : `` Can you tell a sovereign government , one of your closest allies ,

 that 50 years after the war you don't really trust them to keep their own recor

ds ? After getting microfilm copies , paid for by the German government ? I woul

d consider it a gratuitous irritation to our relationship that really isn't warr

anted . '' Many of the files were seized by Allied troops driving across Germany

 such as some 10.7 million Nazi Party membership cards impounded by American sol

diers at a Bavarian paper mill as the SS prepared to reduce them to pulp . The c

ards provided useful evidence for prosecutors at the Nazi War Crimes tribunal in

 Nuremburg . Ever since , the archives have proved invaluable for historians scr

utinizing the Third Reich , for German officials sorting out immigration request

s and for Nazi-hunters looking for culprits . Last year the center processed 27,

000 requests for information from official agencies and 1,300 from private indiv

iduals such as scholars and journalists . Although few files in this collection 

contain direct documentation of mass murder , the information often helps corrob

orate other evidence . `` When a guy writes in his resume , ` I was assigned to 

KZ ( concentration camp ) Auschwitz , ' and he signs it , it 's difficult for hi

m to later claim that he wasn't there , '' said David Marwell , 42 , the center 

's director . As early as 1952 , U.S. officials began discussing the eventual re

turn of the archives to German control . Many other documents , such as papers f

rom the Third Reich foreign ministry , were given to the Germans decades ago aft

er being microfilmed for the National Archives ' Captured German Documents divis

ion . Negotiations over the Berlin Document Center were abandoned in the late 19

60s , however , because of U.S. government concerns that Germany 's proposed rul

es of access `` were unacceptably restrictive of private scholarly access , '' D

eputy Assistant Secretary of State Mary Ann Peters told Lantos ' hearing last mo

nth . Moreover , German officials for years privately hinted that they were cont

ent to have such sensitive material remain in American hands . `` I don't think 

the Germans really wanted the documents , '' said Kobletz , the former State Dep

artment lawyer. `` .. . It 's a bit of a hot potato for everybody . '' The potat

o got hotter in the 1980s when it was discovered that an estimated 10,000 pages 

had been stolen from the archives and sold to memorabilia collectors willing to 

pay up to $ 3,000 for each signature of a high-ranking Nazi . Marwell was dispat

ched to Berlin to overhaul security procedures . In 1989 , the German parliament

 voted unanimously to ask that the center be remanded to German custody . The mi

crofilming project , which had begun in 1968 only to stop in 1972 , resumed . La

st October , the State Department signed an agreement to relinquish the archive 

on July 1 . In bulk alone the collection is staggering , covering roughly eight 

miles of stacked paper . Among the party membership cards is that of Oskar Schin

dler party No. 6,421,477 and Amon Goeth , No. 510,964 , the sadistic commandant 

of Plaszow concentration camp in Poland ; both men were portrayed in the recent 

film `` Schindler 's List . '' Much of the current controversy was stirred by a 

magazine article in the New Yorker by writer Gerald Posner , who questioned both

 the quality of the microfilming and the potential pitfalls in German privacy la

ws . The article contends , for example , that microfilm fails to distinguish be

tween different colored inks used on some documents and renders some writing les

s legible . More significant perhaps are concerns about whether German archivist

s would hinder legitimate scholarship . German privacy law typically prohibits a

ccess to files on people until they have been dead for at least 30 years . Howev

er , as to the issue of accessing the original documents , Marwell expressed con

fidence that the German government will prove to be a fair administrator . Since

 1988 , Germany 's Federal Archives has had the authority to screen requests fro

m German citizens for entry into the Berlin Document Center ; German officials c

ontend that only one request from a scholar and less than 1 percent of requests 

from private citizens have been denied . Moreover , under the agreement signed l

ast October , the Justice Department keeps the right to unrestricted access to t

he files . `` For the kind of access that people are concerned about scholarship

 and Nazi war crime investigations people willn't see a difference , '' Marwell 

said . `` Absent some dramatic change , I don't think scholars have anything to 

worry about . ''

 BOGOTA , Colombia In a presidential election whose major candidates have all be

en victims of Colombia 's rampant violence , economist Ernesto Samper of the rul

ing Liberal Party took a tenuous lead in vote-counting late Sunday . The margin 

was so narrow that a runoff seemed assured . With 79 percent of voting booths re

porting , former development minister Samper , 43 , led Conservative Andres Past

rana with 45.4 percent of the ballots to 44.7 percent . With 18 candidates in th

e race , the absolute majority needed to declare victory today was out of reach 

. The runoff would be June 19 . According to the partial results from the Nation

al Elections Office , an ex-guerrilla named Antonio Navarro was in third place w

ith 3.9 percent of the vote and self-proclaimed witch Regina Betancur was fourth

 with 1.2 percent . The campaign and balloting took place in relative calm , a m

arked contrast to presidential elections four years ago when drug cartel hitmen 

and paramilitary squads assassinated three candidates . In 1990 , the candidates

 were forced to adopt a bunker lifestyle and limit their public appearances to r

adio and television . This year the contenders campaigned openly , accompanied b

y salsa bands and vendors selling liquor . A turnout of about half of the 17 mil

lion eligible voters was widely predicted . Colombia has coaxed left-wing guerri

lla movements into electoral politics and adopted constitutional changes to enco

urage a wider spectrum of participation . But this election seemed to confirm Co

lombia 's status as essentially a two-party state . Samper has promised to creat

e 1.5 million new jobs , increase social spending and carry out an economic open

ing program `` with a human face . '' A balding economist and lawyer with a nasa

l voice , Samper seemed less fit for campaigning on television than Pastrana , b

ut his performance in two TV debates drew wider praise . Pastrana , 39 , an ex-m