DRUG-TRAFFICKING PROBE CONTINUES

Federal officials are investigating whether one or more police officers
were involved with a recently demoted deputy inspector accused of narcotics
violations while in a Bronx homicide-narcotics task force six years ago,
sources told Newsday yesterday.

The deputy inspector, Dennis Sindone, was demoted to captain Friday, less
than a month after Commissioner Bernard Kerik had promoted him. After the
promotion, he had been placed on modified assignment, his badge taken from him.

Police sources say his promotion, which came after he had been a captain
for about a year, had been recommended to Kerik by a sergeant in Kerik's
security detail who had served with Sindone in the same Bronx task force.

Kerik's spokesman Tom Antenen declined to comment.

Police sources said the task force was put together in the 1990s as police
officials determined that most homicides were drug related. The unit, which
worked closely with the detective bureau, was disbanded about a year and a
half ago, the sources said.

In what appears to be the first whiff of major police corruption under
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the department has portrayed Sindone's actions as
isolated and occurring while he was off duty, but sources said the feds are
investigating the possibility that more cops may have been involved.
Neither the department nor the feds have described the specific allegations
against Sindone.

But three sources told Newsday last week that Sindone is accused of
protecting a drug shipment, a charge his attorney Philip Karasyk said,
"Sindone categorically denies." Most disturbing to top department officials
is, first, that Sindone, an 18-year veteran, is the highest ranking
department official ever implicated in alleged drug trafficking and,
second, that he was enormously well-regarded at One Police Plaza.

As a chief for whom he worked put it last week, "If Dennis did this, he
must have been desperate." Police sources say the allegations against
Sindone were first brought to the feds by a confidential informant seeking
a better deal for himself after his arrest on undisclosed charges. Yet
despite the source of the allegations, no one in the department has rushed
to defend Sindone.

A top police official said last week, "The question is not whether or not
Sindone will lose his job but whether or not he will go to jail."
Apparently, the feds have more than the word of a confidential informant.