Galvanized by violence but encouraged by President Clinton's attention to it, the nation's mayors want balance between penalizing career criminals and rescuing first offenders from a life of crime.

"There is no question we should do both crime prevention and crime control," said Louisville, Ky., Mayor Jerry Abramson, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which opened its annual winter meeting here Wednesday.The mayors gave Clinton high marks for anti-crime measures they said borrowed heavily from suggestions they made last November.

Their plan called for a ban on assault weapons, expanding the drug-policy office's authority over day-to-day drug interdiction, offering more drug treatment and addiction prevention and extra money for police.

The Clinton plan, whose highlights were repeated in his State of the Union message Tuesday night, would add 100,000 new police officers, increase spending on drug treatment and education, ban assault weapons, build more prisons and require military-style boot camps for first-time offenders.

"I think he did in fact listen to what we said," said Emmanuel Cleaver, mayor of Kansas City, Mo. "`We can only hope Congress responds as well."

Abramson said that Clinton is "starting to narrow in on the urban agenda" and that mayors expect to see inner cities command as much of the president's attention as health care reform and international trade do.

"The real concern at this point is the issue of crime," Abramson said. "The American people are not interested in ideology at this point."

But a big wrinkle, mayors said, is the issue of flexibility in spending federal crime-fighting money. They'd like more freedom to use the funds for overtime, training, vehicles, equipment and support staff.

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Pending legislation would limit such spending to 15 percent of money received.

"There is such a level of frustration and hopelessness and despair" in urban police departments, said San Diego Mayor Susan Golding. "Flexibility at the local level is critical."

Last January, Clinton sought unsuccessfully to give local governments $1.5 billion for community development, to create short-term jobs and prop up sagging urban economies.

Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, chairman of the mayors' task force on violence and crime, urged Congress not to tie up anti-crime money the same way.

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