IT'S NOT everyone that can get a parking ticket while they are talking to the chief of police. But, of course, I did, and in case you're superstitions, it was Friday the 13th.

I am not superstitious, but like many Americans- especially the young- I am Icery of the vast majority of policemen that I come in contact with. It is paradoxical that so many people actually fear that body of men whose primary function is to protect them. Perhaps this is because black demonstrators in Birmingham, black rioters in Watts and Newark, and student demonstrators in Chicago and in college administration buildings have discovered the uneasy feeling of being hit over the head by a billy club. Indeed, the estimation of policemen has been steadily declining among the young people in America, as is perhaps best shown by the popularization of that not altogether complimentary catch-phrase, "pig."

I have never been clubbed by a policeman, I was not around for University Hall last April, I was not teargases at the Justice Department in Washington. Yet as I walked toward the Cambridge Police Station- an odd-shaped, four-story building on Western Avenue that doubles as head-quarters for the Cambridge VFW and American Legion- I felt an inexplicable, and totally unfounded, anxiety. The closer I got to the station, the more convinced I became that I didn't really want to talk to the chief in the first place. Surely he didn't want to talk to me. Whatever the reason, I did not want to go into that police station.

JAMES REGAN took over as chief of the Cambridge Police Department 20 months ago. Since then, he has worked mainly towards solidifying the organizational structure of the department. Although he has initiated no sweeping reforms, he says he realizes that "any agency- including a police department- has to be flexible." I met Regan for the first time in his second-floor office, and knowing that he did not have much time to spare, I tried first to determine the relationship between Harvard and the Cambridge police. His answers were vague at the outset- "We have certain responsibilities. Our relations with Harvard and the Harvard police are excellent"-but he opened up when he realized that I was seriously interested in his department, and was not a CRIMSON reporter out to get the Cambridge cops. You see, he was leery of me as well.

As we walked down the hall to the Training and Planning Bureau, Regan tried to explain briefly the structural breakdown of the department. Soon I was staring at a large board that places each of Cambridge's 246 policemen in one of six bureaus. By the time I left this room two hours later, I was loaded down with organizational charts, daily manifolds (bulletins outlining the day's activities for each shift), the general statement of the Massachusetts Police Training Council, and a lengthy paper on "the role of the community in the development of police systems." This all seemed strange when Regan told me that "police work is an extremely closed society, and therefore we have to be careful about giving out information."

As he went over the organization chart, Regan pointed out that the department is oriented toward dealing with a large number of transients. Because Cambridge is bounded on all sides by college and university communities- M.I.T., B.U., Tufts, and Harvard- there is an inordinate amount of movement in and out of the city. The situation is complicated because large centers of student activity invariably attract outside groups and hangers-on.

Regan stopped to introduce me to Detective George Powers, a graduate of Boston University who taught in Boston schools for two years before joining the department in 1966, and he was soon excusing himself to attend a meeting. Along with Pat Cochran, a 12-year veteran of the force. Powers forms the staff of the Training and Planning Bureau.

The first class of the Cambridge Police Academy graduated in 1947, and as Powers put it, "in those days, they just handed you a gun and a club and sent you out on the street." Today, the minimum training requirement for Massachusetts policemen is 210 hours of instruction. The Cambridge academy, at which Powers is an instructor, works the 210 hours into a six-week course.

"Six-weeks still isn't a very long time, but it's certainly an improvement over the old days," Powers said. "Because time is short, the emphasis in training is on the responsible use of firearms and a thorough knowledge of criminal law. There is, for instance, a fine line of distinction between felonies, for which an officer must arrest someone, and misdemeanors, for which he may arrest you, but doesn't have to."

Powers pointed out that one of the greatest problems of any police force (including Cambridge's) is not being able to educate its officers in community relations and human psychology. A wrong arrest at the wrong time can only worsen the already shaky relations between police and the community.

"Police come from low income and low middle class groups in most instances," he said. "They have a different set of values, and as a result, their responses are often very different. For many violence is just another way to settle a dispute."

ONE solution is education. Under funds supplied by a federal grant, more than 40 Cambridge policemenare now attending Northeastern University on a part-time basis, and 22 lieutenants are enrolled at Boston College. College credits and degrees are subsequently rewarded with corresponding pay increments.

"Most police aren't educated in social psychology," Cochran, one of the 40 now attending Northeastern, said. "But police are becoming more educated overall. It used to be that policemen learned by experience only, and they did a beautiful job. But now there are more well trained officers, and there is more competition within the department to excel. Education can have an enormous effect as far as changing viewpoints is concerned."

Cambridge is unusual in that it has no problem recruiting policemen. More and more people are beginning to fed that they would not want to enter police work, especially the group that is most important to the upgrading of police standards- college students. Most police departments are experiencing ??? acute shortage of qualified trainees, and Cambridge is one of the few that can concentrate on ???? men from minority ?? ????.

While there are only live blacks on the Cambridge force at present. Powers said that a conscious effort- an effort that can do much for improving community relations- is being made to recruit black and Spanish policemen. There are ??? instance ??? blacks in the present academy class that ??? ??? ??. This is despite the fact that ?? all those taking the civil service examination required for admittance into the police academy, only 10 per cent are black. Powers said that ??? the Cambridge department will approach the distribution in New ???-where ??? third of the force is black-in the ???? future.