UNDERCOVER WORK SEEN AS MIX OF ART, TEMPTATION AND, SOMETIMES, CORRUPTION

Working as an undercover narcotics officer is among the most
dangerous jobs on the police force. You have to pretend to be an
addict and win the trust of dealers. But if you must do the job, it
would seem, a good place to land would be the area designated by the
Police Department as Brooklyn South.

For as large as it is, covering the vast territory that is lower
Brooklyn, Brooklyn South is far from the most crime-ridden patrol
borough in the city. It is home to stretches of middle-class homes in
neighborhoods like Midwood, Ocean Parkway and Sheepshead Bay, and
includes the boutique-filled byways of Park Slope, the boardwalks of
Coney Island and the cobblestone streets of Red Hook.

Last year, 71 murders were recorded in Brooklyn South, about half as
many as were reported in either the Bronx or Brooklyn North, which
includes such neighborhoods as Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Yet it is in Brooklyn South that a corruption scandal has gripped the
narcotics unit. After allegations surfaced that undercover officers
were rewarding informants with drugs, 4 officers have been arrested,
6 suspended and 10 put on desk duty.

Corruption has a history of metastasizing in all types of law
enforcement commands, and all types of precincts, from the busy to
the sleepy. And corruption in narcotics units is one of the most
common scourges of police departments. For undercover officers,
temptation is everywhere, the pressure is enormous, and it is easy to
quietly pocket a bad guy's drugs or cash.

"The problems that come with vice enforcement are as old as policing
themselves," said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police studies at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice. (Mr. O'Donnell also briefly
represented one of the arrested officers, but no longer does; he
would not comment specifically on the Brooklyn South case.)

"It's a dirty business," he said, "and it's hard to be involved in
the business and not get your hands dirty."

Citywide, the narcotics bureau made 51,000 drug arrests last year. Of
those, 7,400 were in Brooklyn South, compared with 15,500 in the
Bronx and 10,400 in Brooklyn North.

According to officials, two narcotics officers, Detective Sean
Johnstone and Officer Julio Alvarez, lied about the amount of cocaine
they recovered from a suspect in September, collecting 28 bags but
reporting 17. Detective Johnstone was later recorded boasting that he
withheld the drugs and gave them to an informant, a clear violation
of department policy, which allows informants to be paid with cash or
leniency, but never drugs.

An inquiry by the department's Internal Affairs Bureau followed, and
led to the arrests last week of two other officers in the unit, Sgt.
Michael Arenella and Officer Jerry Bowens. According to court papers,
in November the pair took drugs and cash they had recovered and gave
them to a confidential informant as payback. They had recovered 40
bags of cocaine and $250, but reported only 38 bags and $210, officials said.

As a result, the Brooklyn district attorney's office has moved to
dismiss 80 drug cases, and is analyzing whether 100 more are tainted.

Still, news of the scandal left scores of the city's police officers
dismayed and perplexed. Undercover officers can easily obtain
department-issued cash for "buy and busts," police lingo for scoring
drugs and making arrests.

Many wondered what the officers would have to gain from imperiling
their careers by supplying informants with drugs. Was it because
Brooklyn South was a tougher place to buy drugs than other patrol
boroughs? Was supervision lax at the unit?

"Anybody who would do something like that is nuts -- completely
nuts," said a former narcotics undercover officer who worked in the
Manhattan North and Brooklyn North patrol boroughs and is currently
assigned to a precinct in Brooklyn South. "Why would you give the
C.I. crack and drugs if you can give them money?" he asked, using
police shorthand for confidential informant. The officer, like most
people in the Police Department, is not permitted to speak to the
news media and did not want to give his name.

The Police Department has divided the city's five boroughs into eight
patrol boroughs. Brooklyn South is one of the largest.

Brooklyn South's narcotics unit is housed in a blocky office building
it shares with a Medicaid-related health care provider. In 2003, some
30 officers were transferred out of the department for swindling
$45,000 in false overtime pay.

A handful of crooked red and white parking signs line the sidewalk
outside and read "Police Department vehicles." And a small but steady
stream of officers go in and out of its doors, some in police
uniforms, holding steaming cups of coffee, others wearing puffy coats
and hoodies, their waistbands bulging with department-issued handguns.

As anywhere in the city, there is an art to being a good narcotics
officer in Brooklyn South. Many of its neighborhoods are as diverse
and disconnected as different countries, and as insular as covens.

"Some housing developments have every minority, but if you go deep
into one neighborhood there might be 100 percent of a certain group,"
said another former law enforcement official who worked in narcotics.
"It is certainly a help to get into a minority neighborhood if you
are black or Hispanic."

Being a good undercover officer takes a certain type of person. You
must be an impeccable actor, a chameleon who can blend seamlessly
into easily combustible situations, coolly stare your target in the
eye and lie. You have to know the street lingo for drugs, like red
top or blue top for different vials of cocaine.

You have to look the part, wear the right clothes, and have a good
back story. If you say you are a mechanic, you'd better know cars,
because chances are that the dealer will too. Many undercover
narcotics officers use props. They might push shopping carts filled
with soda cans in plastic bags, aping a homeless person, and twitch
like an addict.

They might bring along a basketball, saying they are coming back from
the courts and itching to score on the way home. If they are buying
crack, they have to produce a crack pipe, or "stem," and it has to look used.

If the dealer insists that they test the goods before they buy, that
they take a hit off a crack pipe or a snort of cocaine, undercover
officers are supposed to resist unless the situation is dire, unless
they have a gun to their heads. And if they are they are forced to
take the drugs, they must report it to their unit, and undergo a
medical evaluation. And if they are forced to ingest more than once,
they will almost certainly be taken off of the streets.

Undercover officers must deal intimately with volatile types who are
prone to robbing would-be buyers in lieu of selling them drugs. The
officers are often attacked. In 2003, two undercover officers were
killed on Staten Island when a deal to buy illegal guns soured and
suspects shot them.

One of the perks of undercover work is that it can allow swift career
advancement. By going undercover, an officer can be made a detective
in 18 months, speeding up a process that can take three to five years, or more.

As details of the Brooklyn South scandal unfolded, many of the
department's current and former officers faulted the department's pay
scale for attracting lower-caliber candidates and forcing the
department to fill its spots with less experienced officers. Yet each
of the four officers arrested had been on the job between 6 and 12 years.

The transfer of the commander of Brooklyn South's narcotics bureau,
Inspector James O'Connell, has left many officers in the department
especially saddened. The inspector is widely respected in the
department for being a hands-on leader who aggressively fought crime
in some of city's most embattled precincts. He would never have put
up with his officers slipping drugs to informants, they said, had he
only known.

"He's extraordinarily hard working and conscientious, there is no way
he would countenance cutting corners," said one former narcotics unit
official. "That's the thing: The system works to a degree. But in a
Police Department of around 35,000 members, some people will go astray."

Al Baker, Daryl Khan and Michael Wilson contributed reporting.