Why is it ..........

Baghdad -- Standing outside the charred shell of Sadun Police Station, Sgt. Ayad Salman watches a young man in sunglasses stick a screwdriver into the passenger door lock of an old white Volkswagen parked next to a falafel stand.

He unlocks it after a few pokes and holds the door open for his partner, who slides over to the driver's side. The man in sunglasses then opens the hood and hot-wires the car and the thieves speed off. Sgt. Salman makes no move to stop them.

"Some people steal old beat-up cars because they are less obvious than big new four-by-fours," he observed dryly.

Salman turns on his heel and passes through the station's doorless entry into rooms stripped of weapons, telephones and furniture. Even the locks on the jail cells are gone.

"I'd like to arrest criminals, but I don't have a gun," he said. "And even if I caught them, where would I put them?"

Five weeks after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein, robbers and looters still terrorize the capital, preying on anything of value and anyone with money. U.S. officials in Baghdad say restoring order is the top priority, and L. Paul Bremer, the new American administrator, has called 10,000 Iraqi police back to duty nationwide.

But apart from occasional joint patrols with U.S. troops, most of the local police -- disarmed by the occupying forces and virtually unpaid since before the war began March 20 -- rarely leave their offices. American troops rumble randomly by in clusters of humvees offering a semblance of security, but day and night, the streets erupt in gunfire.

"There is still no safety in Baghdad," said Faruk al Safi, a longtime Baghdad businessman. "Americans must do something about it very soon."

On Tuesday, men at the Thieves' Market in central Baghdad openly traded furniture, weapons and documents a few hundred yards from Sadun Police Station.


'WE CAN'T GO THERE'



"They sell weapons; they sell looted goods. It's all illegal, but we can't go there," said police Col. Mohammed Forhan. "We have no weapons to protect ourselves."

A burst of gunfire reverberated off the walls down the street as he spoke, causing a flock of pigeons pecking at garbage to take panicked refuge in a palm tree.

Every day for the past 10 days, Iraqi police brass who meet with U.S. forces have promised that "tomorrow" Sadun's officers will receive salaries, weapons, office furniture and an American tank to guard the station at night.

None of it has materialized, apart from a $20 handout U.S. forces distributed to police officers and some public service workers in Baghdad last week. The Sadun police have been working for free "because this is our country,

and we want it to be safe," said Sgt. Walid Khaled, a 31-year veteran of the force.

Meanwhile, the criminals Khaled and his colleagues had once arrested are walking free, sprung during Hussein's general amnesty in November or when U.S. troops opened Baghdad's prisons last month. Three times since the station reopened on April 23, a group of 10 armed men has come by threatening to kill Sgt. Nadir Hussein, who arrested them for murder and armed robbery last year.

POLICE ARSENAL OF 2 RIFLES

When American forces disarmed Iraqi police last month, the only weapons they allowed Sadun's 40 officers to keep were two AK-47s, which the officers lean carefully against the precinct's concrete wall.

The two assault rifles aren't enough to make the police feel they can safely stay at the precinct at night. So they go home every day at 2 p.m, returning at 8 the next morning to watch scenes of crime unfold in front of them.

"All of this makes us feel very uncomfortable," Forhan said.

They start their day by cleaning the building because every night someone comes in and scatters garbage and human feces on the station floor. The stink lingers.

Baghdad's erratic postwar garbage collection has not reached this part of town yet. The only way to get rid of the heaps of refuse is to set it on fire, and the mingled smells of smoke and rotting meat seep into the police station's rooms, empty except for charred filing cabinets filled with the ashes of burned police files. A dozen officers loiter outside; others wander aimlessly through the derelict hallways.

"Welcome to my office," said Forhan. He is joking. There is no glass in the windows. Wires dangle from the ceiling where a fan and lights once stood. Holes dot the wall where pictures once hung on nails. The pictures are gone. So are the nails.

"I even had air conditioning," Forhan said. Outside, the temperature has climbed to 102 degrees.

Last week, two men came to complain about thieves. He filled out a report. Now he has to carry it with him wherever he goes, because there is no place in the ruined police station to store it safely. He has not followed up on the complaints.

When Abdullah Hasan, who owns a small clothes store on the edge of the Thieves' Market, came to file a complaint about looters Tuesday, Khaled turned him away.

"But you are a policeman; you have to do something!" Hasan pleaded.

"What can I do? I have no power," Khaled replied.

Brig. Gen. Amer Hashem at the Central Police Station said few Baghdad residents bother to report such crimes to the police.

Holding a white rose petal under his nose, Hashem said, "People don't really come to us because they don't think we can help them. Basically, they are right."

Outside the station house, Salman lifts himself off the front steps and motions for Khaled to follow him up the street.

"Let's go," he said. "We might as well have some falafel."