It was a small, but telling, act of civil disobedience. Last Sunday, the Harvard University Police Association paid several hundred dollars to rent a twin engine plane to fly over the Head of the Charles regatta. The plane carried a sign: "Support Harvard Police for a Fair Contract."

It wasn't so much what the sign said as what it signified--open defiance and deep-seated frustration with how Harvard police officers are treated.

This has been a trying year for the women and men in blue. So trying that police officers, notoriously tight-lipped servants of their University and their department, are talking about life as a Harvard cop.

In most police organizations, the breaking of ranks is taboo. At Harvard, it used to be that way. But the year 1993 has changed things to the point that internal grievances may be broadcast to 200,000 boat racing fans.

The Harvard police department, officers say, is racked by internal dissension, hampered by mismanagement and an absence of leadership and dispirited over a lack of recognition. Its acting leader is dogged by charges of corruption. Paint is literally peeling off the walls, and the locker room showers, like many things at the 29 Garden St. headquarters, are in a state of disrepair.

"There are big problems in this department," says a senior police official. "We got no leadership, no direction."

Officers say they want more consistent management decisions. They want their longstanding concerns about working conditions and supervision addressed. They want, they say, to get back to the serious business of policing the Harvard campus.

As of yet, officers say, Harvard University has refused to address their concerns.

Officer Robert Kotowski, head of the police association, says the University's attempts to inform the public about campus safety are seriously flawed. Many of the most dangerous incidents are downplayed by the University, and Harvard, officers charge, points out a supposed lack of hazardous duty when patrol officers negotiate for raises.

"If the University chooses not to recognize the serious crime that happens on all its campuses, that's fine," said Kotowski. "But I won't stand by and let them use that against officers in trying to downplay the serious, dangerous job the University police do."

Nearly two dozen Harvard officers have spoken with The Crimson over the last two months only on the condition of anonymity because, they say, the department has a policy that officers should not talk to the media and that they may be disciplined for doing so.

The officers have said they feel their hard work is often ignored or not understood by the community. It is not that Harvard students, faculty and staff are not grateful, they say. It is that many members of the community do not know the extent of the peril their work entails.

Officers charge that the Harvard Gazette, the University's official publication, regularly 'waters down' or omits altogether the most dangerous and threatening incidents in its weekly "Police Log."

On October 11, for example, two Harvard officers arrested a pair of suspects who allegedly shattered the window of the Radio Shack store on Mt. Auburn and stole several hundred dollars in amplifiers and miscellaneous electronic equipment. The suspects also allegedly committed a similar theft in Brookline. Harvard police recorded the incident, and The Crimson printed a story. The only police log entry in the Gazette for Oc-tober 11 concerns a computer theft in Wadsworth House.

Laura Ferguson, managing editor of the Gazette, said early this week that she was unsure about the paper's policy on entries in the police log. Ferguson said she would call back with the policy, but did not. She then did not return repeated phone calls this week.

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.

Kotowski calls this phenomenon a "revolving door" and says it is "one of the biggest issues" facing the department. He says it is perhaps the biggest tangible example of department mismanagement.

"The money walks out the door, some work two or three years and then leave--because of the substandard pay," says Kotowski. "It's definitely mismanagement."

Murphy denies charges of mismanagement, but says that if officers continue to leave at their present rate, the University should examine what is going on at the police department.

"They sought better employment conditions and better job opportunities else-where," Murphy said. "One went to a town [police force], one to Massachusetts State Police, one went to city of Boston. I would have to say salary could play a vital part in that."

Kotowski says the officers left because Harvard "pays substandard rates. If there's any group of employees in the University that should maintain diversity, it should be the police department."

But Murphy also said that losing those officers will not limit the department's ability to relate to and work with a diverse student body. "It doesn't limit our understanding," he said.

Yet any kind of corrective action to stem the revolving door phenomenon would have to be a "collective decision," he said. "Human resources, the chief would have input. With the continuing trends the way they are it might be a very important issue."

But problems in the police department go deeper than personnel issues. The facilities at 29 Garden St. themselves are a sore point among officers.

A Crimson investigation of working conditions at the department revealed that longstanding maintenance problems, which the University has allowed to go uncorrected, have hurt the working conditions of employees.

A University-commissioned inspection of the department's building found asbestos-containing materials throughout the building, including floor tiles and pipes in many locations, like locker rooms, frequented by officers.

Asbestos was removed from the police station at the same time officers and others worked in the building. Officers have said they were never told about the widespread presence of the suspected carcinogen at 29 Garden St.

And while repairs to the facility seem to be progressing slowly, necessary changes in the equipment used by officers remain incomplete.

Harvard police officers, for example, say they need better guns to respond to more dangerous situations involving better-equipped criminals.

On Commencement day, for example, Officer Robert Cooper took a nine millimeter semiautomatic Glock pistol and two fully loaded magazines from a man outside the Au Bon Pain restaurant in Harvard Square. And last month, Detective Richard Mederos was involved in a high-speed chase and shootout with a New York man wanted for murder near the Medical School.

As a result, about a third of Harvard's officers, in most cases the newer members of the department, are now carrying the nine millimeter semiautomatic handguns, instead of the traditional six-shot .38 caliber police specials.

Kotowski says he would like to see all officers have the new guns, but he realizes there are many other needs and that department funds are in short supply.

"Different priorities come up, hopefully everyone will wind up carrying the same guns," Murphy says. "It has to do with budgets. We're trying to do as best we can. Everybody likes to have the newer weapons."

There have been other efforts to improve the department's communications operation. In January, the department lost one of its radio channels when it refused to renew its license with the federal government.

The channel is now apparently back on the air, and to aid the officers further, the University recently furnished all of Harvard's officers with new, lighter radios that offer more channels.

Decision-making on these and other issues has been slowed by a lack of leadership in the department, officers charge. Police Chief Paul E. Johnson is being treated for a serious illness and only comes in occasionally. Murphy has stepped in to replace him as the designated officer-in-charge.

"I've taken on all the duties of the chief in his absence. Anything that may come up, I act as his designee," says Murphy. "Whatever comes up day to day, sometimes the chief is here and he handles it. If not, I handle it."

Johnson, 63, has told friends he will retire at the end of this year, and if he does, officers say they won't be sorry to see him go. The chief has widely been described as uncommunicative and out-of-touch--so much so that he mistakenly switches the names of two veteran officers.

Murphy's leadership, however, is even more strongly criticized. Murphy is in charge of providing police protection for major events such as the Head of the Charles, Commencement and visits by dignitaries.

Officers say Murphy is secretive about how he makes arrangements for such events, making him a commodity in the University and thus cementing his leadership position in a department where many officers do not trust him.

Murphy disputes that, saying he is very open with officers about how he arranges events and how he manages the department.

But the acting chief is widely viewed in the department as untrustworthy--a perception heightened by recent reports that he has close financial and personal connections to the bus company he employs for Commencement and reunion activities.

Those revelations, officers say, have so discredited Murphy as to eliminate him from contention to be the next chief. Many officers believe the department's next leader will be from outside the University, and Murphy will likely be relegated to the position of deputy chief--which would be a promotion for the lieutenant.

"I haven't heard that being mentioned," Murphy says of the possibility of promotion. "I'm sure I'm always interested in upward mobility in the police department as well as everyone else."

Many officers are pinning their hopes, for change in the department on the next chief of police.

They are nervous, though, because that choice lies in the hands of Marshall, the general counsel.

Marshall, who has been distant during her first year as the department's supervisor, is viewed with suspicion by many officers. Marshall's predecessor, Daniel Steiner '54, knew them by their first names. Few officers have actually met the current general counsel.

With only slim hopes of internal resolution to the department's problems, police officers may continue to go public. It's an unusual and unnatural pose for police, but many feel going outside the department is the only way to find redress for their grievances.

That means more ads, more department secrets made public. Maybe even another airplane.

"This is real," says Kotowski, talking at once of both the work police do and the public crusade he has undertaken. "It's not a movie, not TV."