Ushering in a new era for policing and security on campus, the University announced yesterday it will completely restructure the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) to implement one of the nation's first campus-based community policing initiatives.

In one of the first stages of the reforms, the department's seven lieutenants--its top-level police supervisors--were fired yesterday.

The massive departmental changes, which Harvard officials have hinted at for months, include the hiring of new administrators and the adding of more than a dozen new officers to patrol the campus.

In interviews yesterday, University Vice President and General Counsel Anne Taylor and HUPD Chief Francis D. "Bud" Riley said the change in the department's organization was long overdue.

"My job is to make sure Bud has the tools he needs to do his job," Taylor said.

The restructuring comes in the wake of an extensive audit of the HUPD by nationally known community policing scholar George L. Kelling, a research fellow at the Kennedy School of Government and a professor of criminal justice at Rutgers.

During the course of his investigation, Kelling said he found a department confused by "double messages going to line officers about what their priorities should be and how they should patrol."

His 50-page report--compiled after interviews with patrol officers, sergeants, administrators and top department personnel--reveals a department fraught with tension between Riley and many of his veteran lieutenants.

Kelling termed it a "struggle for control" that has shaped HUPD policy and hindered its progression into a modern crime prevention and crime-fighting force.

Investigating complaints that Riley was an insensitive, out-of-touch chief and accusations that some of Riley's lieutenants tried to undermine the chief's authority, the report concludes that complaints about the chief stemmed from the struggle for control.

At the end, it provides bullet-point recommendations to change the HUPD "from a reactive law enforcement model...to a community, team-policing model."

The biggest of the recommendations endorsesRiley's goal as department chief: to make HUPD amodel of community policing, which emphasizessmall-scale problem-solving (such as fixing abroken window or knowing the character of theneighborhood) instead of focusing solely on crime.

"The chief wanted to go in the direction thatwas wanted by the University and...basically metwith broad approval throughout the Harvardcommunity," Kelling said.

But institutional factors like a top-heavycommand staff prevented the implementation ofRiley's plan.

Now, acting on Kelling's recommendations, therank of lieutenant is being eliminated and moresenior sergeants and patrol officers will be addedto the beat.

"Community policing forces us to [reallocateresources] both downward and outward," Taylor saidof the changes.