This latest round of incidents left minority students, once strong supporters of Johnson, damning him with faint praise.

In particular, they suggest Johnson isn't sufficiently sensitive to the attitudes of the officers who work under him.

"I'm sure [Johnson] has good intentions, but I questions whether a racist officer would express his racism openly and overtly in front of him," Black Students Association president Zaheer R. Ali '94 said in an October interview.

Some employees suggest that department insensitivity has been abetted by a lack of minorities in the upper ranks of the department. All sever Harvard police lieutenants are white, they note. And Johnson's record of promoting and hiring minorities is, at best, mixed.

While four of the department's 13 sergeants are Black, all of them were promoted before Johnson became chief. In fact, of the eight senior officers promoted by Johnson who have remained with the department, none are members of a racial minority.

Of the 24 officers currently on the force who were hired by Johnson during his tenure at Harvard, two are Black, four are women, and one is Asian-American. But until last year's crop of new officers, the Harvard police had no more Black officers on the force then when Johnson first became chief.

N issue the chief has faced highlights problems of racial insensitivity in the department more then the current crisis in the security guard unit over charges made by seven former and current minority guards last May that they were discriminated against and harassed by their supervisors, who work under Johnson.

Johnson strongly defended his supervisors, who have denied the charges. He said the charges were old and had been properly investigated. He criticized The Crimson for reporting a dead issue.

At the same time, Johnson moved quickly to seek out and discipline whomever had leaked documents to The Crimson detailing the charges.

Immediate suspicion centered on security guard Stephen G. McCombe, a longtime employee and union steward in the guard unit.

According to McCombe and department sources, Johnson dispatched Sgt. Edward Greene to write up a police report for stolen documents--even though McCombe says he had not reported anything stolen--so that the police could search The Crimson for the documents.

"Greene told me Chief Johnson had sent him." McCombe said in an interview in February. "They might have been trying to put pressure on someone for possession of stolen property."

McCombe says Greene left without writing a report, saying there was no crime to be investigated. Then, in an October letter, Johnson again asked McCombe about any possible stolen documents, McCombe says.

And while Johnson continued to say the charges of harassment and discrimination had been looked at thoroughly, it was revealed that then-University Attorney Diane Patrick, who conducted an investigation of the guards' complaints last spring, did not interview any of the guards making charges.

In September, Johnson gave hints that he might be approaching the controversy differently. He named Kevin Bryant, a Black officer with race relations experience, to serve as a resource to the guards. Johnson maintained that there was nothing more than a "perception" of racism at the time, but many guards say they don't feel comfortable approaching Bryant.