In the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute between Harvard's security guards and the University, guards this week charge that they had been left out of community policing policies, burdened by overtime and left in limbo in contract negotiations.

Several Harvard guards say they are outraged at the statements made by Harvard University Police (HUPD) Chief Francis D. "Bud" Riley and other university officials about the history of their unit and current contract negotiations.

In particular, two top guards, Stephen G. McCombe, the union president, and Howard Reid, a former union steward, question Riley's account of his attempts to integrate guards into community policing.

And McCombe says comments by Riley and other Harvard administrators about the per-house cost it takes to employ the security guards are false.

In a February interview, Riley said he encountered resistance from the guard union when he tried to start his community policing program.

Community policing is an initiative championed by Riley that attempts to place officers more directly in contact with students and House communities.

But McCombe, who was union president at the time, says he offered no resistance to guards' inclusion in the program.

And Reid, who was one of the five guards who began to take community policing classes in 1996, says the guards' inclusion "was only an afterthought."

"They said they only had room for five guards" out 57 total employed by Harvard, he says. "I mean, to say that the guards balked, it's totally false."

Reid says that, at the time, he received calls from other guards asking him why he had been chosen over them for inclusion in the community policing program.

Reid recalls saying to the questioners, "I don't know."

In response, Riley says that all guards--not just the five Reid says were chosen for training--received a one-day orientation to community policing, and that he invited all the guards to join the program.

"The people were not chosen, they volunteered," he said.

A Living Wage?

McCombe, who had earlier declined comment on this issue, citing union confidentiality, said the statements of administration officials about the cost it takes to employ the guards were not accurate.