By TOM HAYS

NEW YORK (AP) On a tranquil fall afternoon in Washington Square Park, a
drug dealer using the alias ``Jerry Budso'' slumps on a bench, sets down
the large box of corn flakes he's carrying and frets.

``I'm on the edge right now,'' says Budso, who estimates he's been busted
more than 50 times in the popular Greenwich Village park. ``The cops. I
feel it. They're up to something.''

Something is up: Mayor Rudolph Giuliani wants to evict Budso and the other
resident druggies from the park as part of an $80million, antidrug
campaign an electionyear encore to the city's dramatic drop in serious
crime.

The mayor announced this week his aim is to make the park, which has been
one of the city's most notorious openair drug markets for decades,
offlimits to drug convicts as a condition of probation. The plan is
designed to thwart repeat offenders who, despite prodigious rap sheets,
rarely serve more than a month in jail before they're back in the park.

Unlike neighborhoods where violent turf wars have held residents hostage,
the Village's 6th Precinct is one of the safest in the city. Only three
shootings have been recorded there so far this year; there were none during
the same period last year. Robberies are down nearly 50 percent since 1993.

But located in the heart of New York University, Washington Square Park is
symbolically significant to the administration's ``quality of life''
campaign. The strategy of targeting petty offenses, officials claim, has
helped drive down crime to 1960s levels.

Some Villagers have applauded the approach. But others call the notion of
turning Washington Square Park into a drugfree zone wishful thinking.

``We've seen it all before and nothing changes,'' Neil Evers, 31, said
Thursday as he walked his poodle. ``We're used to it. The whole drug thing
is part of the fabric here.''

Even police admit that the scruffy band of drug dealers and their familiar
mantra ``Smoke? Smoke?'' are more a nuisance than a menace.

Their products mainly are lowgrade marijuana and sometimes socalled
``club drugs'' like Ecstasy, police said. Buyers are lured from the park to
side streets or fast food restaurants for transactions. Rarely do people
shoot heroin in the park an image evoked by Giuliani when he unveiled the
plan.

Past sweeps have put resilient dealers on a firstname basis with cops.

Retired lieutenant Robert McKenna who once coordinated an operation that
bagged former Van Halen front man David Lee Roth chuckled when he
recalled chasing the notorious John Outerbridge, 38, a dealer with 75
arrests in the park.

``I said, `Johnny, why are you running?' He stopped and apologized,''
McKenna said.

Undercover cops collared Outerbridge again in June after he allegedly sold
them a bag of marijuana for $90. Hit with federal charges of dealing within
1,000 feet of a schoolhouse, he now faces up to 20 years in prison.

Then there's the case of Mike Muro. After nine drug arrests in the park,
Muro, 26, was found shot in the head last year and hospitalized in critical
condition. Two weeks later, police said, he was back in business.

Budso, 37, said he thinks of himself not as a dealer but a homeless
``hustler.'' Like many of his peers, the Harlem native peddles weed to
support a heroin and cocaine addiction.

The last time Budso was arrested, he spent 10 days in jail. Then because
of ``animal instinct, I guess'' he returned to Washington Square Park. He
doesn't recommend the lifestyle.

``It sucks,'' he said. ``It really does.''

Copyright 1997 The Associated Press.