Administrators say the University gives Harvard police their due. Vice President and General Counsel Margaret H. Marshall, who oversees the department, says she is not aware of any incidents being deleted from the log.

"If anybody has any concerns about the blotter, if they let me know, I'll take a look at it," says Marshall. "I'd be happy to look at it but there is certainly no policy of watering down."

Despite Marshall's stated openness, officers felt stifled enough to place a two-page ad in a student publication last week to detail 10 incidents in which police acted courageously but were not credited.

The University's own police report of one particularly violent incident says three officers were spat on by a violent man who was bleeding from his mouth and claiming to have AIDS. The Gazette published the following: "A suspect was arrested at 75 Mount Auburn St. for participating in a fray and being a disorderly person."

The result of all this, officers say, may be to make students believe the campus is more safe than it actually is. The University and the police effectively teach students "how to protect their fingernails, not their asses," Kotowski says.

Kotowski says that if the University won't do its job of publicizing the dangers of police work, he will. The union president has promised that he will run similar ads detailing untold incidents from Harvard's own police files.

"This is only the beginning," Kotowski says of last week's ad. "There are probably 80 or 90 such incidents from this year alone that I will publicize."

Even sergeants and lieutenants, who are not involved in the contract negotiations, say they are glad that as a result of the union's efforts, more people are learning about the hard, dirty work that the police do.

Acting Chief Lawrence J. Murphy says the union's activities and protracted negotiations with the University have not had any effect on the day-to-day operations of the police force. "No...not at all," Murphy said.

Of the advertisement, Murphy said all the information printed was accurate. The ad said Harvard police have arrested 253 persons and responded to 12,800 calls so far this year.

"It's important that people know what the police do," Murphy said.

Working conditions in the department, in addition to a lack of University support, have made it more difficult to keep police officers at Harvard.

In 1992, the department held a press conference to boast of its new, racially diverse and gender-balanced class of rookie officers. Many officers within that class were given special training in everything from motorcycle riding to rape-crisis education.

The diverse class of officers looked good in Harvard's most recent affirmative action report, but their impact on the department has been negligible. That's because three members of the class didn't stick around long.

Murphy confirmed this week that two women and one Asian American man from that class have left the department, after only about two years of service. He said salary issues may have played a "vital part" in the officers' decisions to leave.