One day this spring, a sign went up on a wall in the University police watch commander's office--the nerve center of Harvard's police and security department.

In large printed letters, the political campaign-style sign advertises a candidate "for chief." Beneath the sign is a picture of Curly from the Three Stooges.

The watch commander who put it up says the sign is nothing more than a tribute to "classic comedy." But other officers say the sign makes light of the similarity in appearance between Curly and Police Chief Paul E. Johnson, who are both bald. And it isn't all that funny. The sign, they say, symbolizes two disturbing trends about the police and security department and its chief.

For one, the sign indicates a lack of respect for the department leaders, especially Johnson. In addition, it shows just how inaccessible and out-of-touch the chief of police has become. The watch commander's office is just down the stairs in 29 Garden St. from Johnson's office--a 10-second walk away, though officers say Johnson rarely, if ever, walks there.

These are not insignificant charges. While many Harvard managers are called out-of-touch, they do not preside, as Johnson does, over a department charged with providing 24-hour protection for students, faculty and staff.

Something about the department needs to change, employees say. The solution, many officers say with a nostalgic tinge in their voices, is to bring back the past.

In 1983, the police department was a different place. In the 10 years since, policing, technology, staff education and investiga-

Something about the department needs to change, employees say. tions have all improved--a rise brought into focus this year by the widely commended arrest of student-impersonator and career confidence artist James Arthur Hogue.

In matters of personnel and employee relations, however, the Harvard University Police Department has fallen far.

When Saul L. Chafin left as police chief a decade ago, the department stood at its apex. He had been widely credited for rebuilding morale after the troubled tenure of David L. Gorski, who was criticized for the same conduct Johnson now stands accused of being maccessible, arbitrary in decision-making and unapproachable. Chafin himself was so well-respected--and morale was so high that he received, by one count, five going away parties.

'A Paragon of Professionalism'

Johnson, a Boston police area commander in Roxbury and Mattapan, arrived at Harvard in December 1983. Then General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54 said he hired the new chief, who did not have the experience in college police work that Chafin had, because of his reputation as a paragon of professionalism.

The era of good feeling quickly evaporated. Two months after Johnson took over, the University was rocked by charges from Black students that Harvard police officers regularly harassed them. The chief launched a campaign to, as he put it, "reach out" to students, but some criticized his approach to the complaints.

"I can give it to my officers," Johnson said of a written policy on harassment proposed by students, "but I can't make them read it." This quickly became the pattern for addressing what became annual complaints of police harassment: talk with students, apologize, but avoid making any policy changes.

This process, however, did not always appear to satisfy the needs of students claiming harassment.

"He was never very animated, like he was just trying to appease me," says Andre L. Williams '89, a Miami attorney, who says he was harassed by Harvard and Cambridge police on a shuttle bus in the spring of 1989. "Johnson was just trying to wash his hands of it."