Along with school vouchers, sales taxes and city charter revisions, voters in San Francisco will decide next Tuesday whether to allow a veteran police officer to walk his beat with a ventriloquist's dummy.

The ballot measure is a spot of comic relief in an otherwise uninspiring off-year election here and seems popular with voters in the North Beach neighborhood where the officer, Bob Geary, and the dummy, Brendan O'Smarty, had worked without a peep of official complaint until a series of high-level changes in the police department.

The dummy's silly wooden face made lost children giggle, quieted domestic disputes and encouraged homeless people to move from doorways. But after a new chief took charge of the department, Officer Geary was told that the dummy was O.K. at youth and community events, but not on patrol, when he would need written permission each time he wanted to take Brendan out of the trunk.

How ridiculous, Officer Geary said, that a cop is trusted to decide when to use his gun but not his dummy! So he spent $10,000 of his own money to gather the 9,964 signatures necessary under California law to qualify his initiative for the ballot.