The National Police Agency intends to take on 5,000 more officers as an urgent measure and will incorporate the plan in its budget requests for fiscal 2002, which begins next April 1, agency officials said Friday.

The proposed increase comes amid a record low arrest rate of 19 percent for criminal cases for the first half of this year.

The NPA had planned to gradually add more than 10,000 new officers to the force over the next five years as part of police reforms, but decided that swift action was needed to establish a system to maintain the public's safety and peace of mind, the officials said.