POLICE CALL DRUG GANG HARD TO ROOT OUT

In an era of stabilized crack markets and increasingly intricate drug
investigations, the Black-Top gang kept pace with the times to make
close to $2 million a year, city prosecutors said yesterday.

The gang moved from the streets to indoors, reigning over two brick
apartment buildings in Harlem and scanning customers with electronic
detectors to screen for recording devices, officials said.

But on Thursday, law enforcement officials said they had finally
rooted out the gang, which they said had operated for at least a
decade. Prosecutors described a painstaking effort to amass enough
evidence for conspiracy charges. The indictment of 14 leading members
of the gang on drug conspiracy charges was announced Thursday, and 12
were arrested in a raid that began at 6:30 a.m. that day, officials
said. Several suspects were picked up in prison.

The police said yesterday that they were still searching for two men,
whom officials identified as Angel Celpa and Steven Colbert.

The police arrested 13 other people during the raid and seized 4,100
vials of crack, 4 guns, a high-tech security system, a money-counting
machine, remote transmitters and $5,900 in cash, the police said. They
also recovered a computer, and officials were planning to search the
hard drive for further evidence.

"It was a tremendously difficult operation to bust," said Bridget G.
Brennan, the city's special narcotics prosecutor. "They used all kinds
of countersurveillance techniques."

When the Police Department stepped up its efforts against street-
corner drug deals, the Black-Top gang transferred its business into
the two Harlem buildings, 12-14 and 16-18 Old Broadway, officials
said. The gang worked out of vacant apartments and sometimes took over
the apartments of residents who were not involved in the sales, the
authorities said.

In one case last November, the authorities said, a woman returned home
after a weekend away to find that her apartment had been broken into,
and her baby's diaper bag had been loaded with walkie-talkies. Shortly
afterward, the authorities said, the woman went away for several days,
and returned to find that the locks on her apartment had been changed
and drugs were being sold out of her home.

At a news conference yesterday, Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik
said the gang used the kind of tactics that make the job of an
undercover detective, a job he formerly held, dangerous.

"The people that work these types of operations have to go into these
apartments most of the time without a firearm," he said. "Once they're
in there, they're really in the hands of the people behind those doors."

Some residents of the buildings were relieved to hear of the arrests.
Manuel Guaman, 44, who has lived at 16-18 Old Broadway for 10 years,
said, "They were making too much noise the whole night, just yelling."
Sometimes, Mr. Guaman said, when he left his apartment to go to work
at midnight, "I couldn't walk in the hall because it was really crowded."

But another resident, Mercedes Rosario, 37, said through a translator
that she had not encountered gang activity in the four years that she
had lived at 12-14 Old Broadway. "There was no gang here, and there
was no problem," she said.

Officials said the Black-Top gang was able to maintain its Old
Broadway stronghold despite what they called "consistent enforcement
efforts." Since 1999, the police arrested more than 200 people
connected to the buildings, both buyers and sellers, on
narcotics-related charges, they said. But until now, the authorities
said, the suspects had managed to avoid a conspiracy charge.

Guards for the gang posted outside the buildings used remote
transmitters to signal beeper-equipped dealers when the police were
nearby, creating an early-warning system that kept law enforcement
officials at bay, prosecutors said.

Gang members blackened stairwells and dead-bolted exits. When police
officers entered the building, dealers would send their customers
charging downstairs to run interference, delaying the officers long
enough to fold up operations, officials said. Members threatened
undercover officers, turned away unfamiliar customers and scrupulously
limited sales to keep potential penalties low, the authorities said.

Prosecutors said the case broke when one of the suspects, Carlos
Hernandez, had a motorcycle accident while delivering a shipment of
crack vials to one of the buildings. Officials said Mr. Hernandez was
wearing a bulletproof vest and a backpack stocked with 4,500 crack
vials when he was found unconscious on the street, a block from his
destination.

The police identified the gang leaders as Jose Celpa, 22, and Vladimir
Silfa, 29, who was arrested in state prison. Mr. Celpa was charged
with three counts of conspiracy and three counts of criminal
possession of a controlled substance. Mr. Silfa was charged with two
counts of conspiracy.

Eric W. Siegle, a lawyer representing one of the defendants, Rafael
Rosario, 22, said Mr. Rosario would plead not guilty at his
arraignment, which a spokeswoman for Ms. Brennan said was scheduled
for Monday.

The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which
took over the two buildings in 1995 when the previous owner failed to
pay taxes, is scheduled to turn over the buildings to a nonprofit
organization.