INSTEAD OF ID, THEY SHOW BADGES

On a Friday night in Manhattan, with the temperature dropping and the
lights of Times Square blurred by drizzle, 52 young people fanned out on
the streets of Midtown, looking for trouble.

They looked for expired inspection stickers, open beer bottles,
double-parked cars and drunks. They prayed for a fight to break out among
the crowds on 42nd Street. They were rookie police officers, tugging at
their heavy gun belts, hoping for their first arrest.

"It's so quiet; the place where they put me is always quiet," complained
Sabrina Bella, 25 years old and all of 5-foot-3, including her hat. "It's
so hard to even find a parking ticket."

Officer Bella had a point. Since the beginning of the year, crime has
dropped by 43 percent in the narrow sliver bounded by 52nd Street and 30th
Street on the north and south, and Seventh and Eighth Avenue on the east
and west.

And as similar scenes have played out from East Harlem to Crown Heights and
Woodhaven, Queens, the results have been even better. In 24 tiny pockets
where crime previously refused to fall to the lows experienced by the rest
of the city, felonies are down 46.5 percent compared with the same period
last year. Crime is also down in the subway system, where the department
has zeroed in on 38 spots.

Police officials attribute the declines to Operation Impact, a
two-month-old program that put 1,400 rookies like Officer Bella into the
city's toughest neighborhoods.

The strategy is hardly rocket science: pair troublesome areas with eager
new recruits, and soon all licensed street vendors will be the requisite
number of inches from the curb, the smallest altercation will be met with a
small army, and woe to the man who has New Jersey license plates but a New
York inspection sticker (not, technically, a crime, but worth
double-checking with the supervising lieutenant).

And in keeping with the theory that those who commit petty offenses are
more likely to do worse, felonies in those areas have dropped precipitously.

"What we did was an analysis based on historical data - information from
our borough and precinct commanders to identify areas that can be helped by
a significant uniform presence," said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly,
who announced the program last month with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Operation Impact differs from similar efforts that have gone before, like
Operation Pressure Point, Operation Take Back and Operation Condor, said
Garry F. McCarthy, the deputy commissioner for police operations. It does
not focus solely on drugs, it is not intended simply to displace crime, and
it does not resort to expensive overtime, he said.

And Compstat, the Police Department's computerized crime-tracking system,
has let the department concentrate the effort on specific spots and monitor
it daily.

"It's like pinpoint precision bombing," said Deputy Inspector Robert
Napolitano, the commander of the 103rd Precinct in Jamaica, Queens. Both
the Times Square impact zone and the 25-block zone in the commercial center
of Jamaica last year accounted for nearly a third of the major crimes in
their precincts, although they are less than one-tenth of the area.

Inspector Napolitano, a high-ranking officer who has been known to stop his
unmarked car to issue parking tickets, has flooded his zone with a command
vehicle, a patrol car with rolling lights, and 17 recruits for each of two
overlapping eight-hour shifts. "I want them to see cops everywhere," he said.

It is not clear what will happen in the impact zones when the operation is
over. The recruits are scheduled to continue their assignments for two more
months. Commissioner Kelly said he was considering ways to continue a form
of the program, perhaps using overtime.

On Friday night at the Midtown South Precinct, the recruits massed at 7:30
p.m. for roll call. Officer Eric Rivera, 33, was a minor celebrity, having
accomplished the astounding feat of making three arrests in three days. But
that night he had been assigned to a relatively quiet stretch of 38th
Street. "The three-eight?" a buddy asked. "That's like Hollywood."

Officer Rivera preened. "The boss is trying to take me down a little bit,"
he said.

There were officers to teach everything a rookie must learn. How not to
yell on the radio. When it is advisable to frisk someone. Sgt. Richard Mack
pored over their paperwork, then handed back one form that lacked details.
"Remember, we're not report-takers," he said disdainfully. "We're
investigators."

The main weapon of Operation Impact is the foot patrol. The work is not
easy. Officers on foot are vulnerable. It is cold. There are long stretches
of ground to cover, and long stretches of time when nothing happens.

Patrolling 40th Street, Officer Kristy Maloney, 24, longed for a pair of
roller skates. But there is more to it than uniforms on the street.
Narcotics squads, gang enforcement teams and undercover officers focus on
the area, Mr. McCarthy said.

And then there is community relations. In Times Square, the 24-hour
Internet cafe on 42nd Street was a late-night haven for gang members and
drug addicts, the police said. That Friday, the owner had agreed to close
at 1 a.m.

But that only made things more difficult for the rookies itching to put
everything they learned at the academy into play. "I was going to write a
parking summons, but the lady came right out," Officer Padraig Primrose,
22, told Sgt. Nino Saracino, the supervising officer, who made rounds in a
patrol car.

Only Officer John Dziedzic, 22, allowed as how he would prefer not to make
an arrest, because the paperwork would require him to stay well into
Saturday morning.

In Times Square, the action is at night. But in Jamaica, Queens, teeming
with thousands of commuters, high school students and shoppers, most crimes
occur by daylight. Many recruits had landed three or even four arrests -
more than an officer is taught to expect in his first year. But on a
recent, quiet Sunday, there were still some laggards.

"I don't get lucky, I'll tell you that; I don't," said Officer Matt Beigay,
21, waving cars out of the bus zone on Jamaica Avenue. "I just want that
arrest. I figure if I stay on post, it'll come."

Leaning into the wind, a stoic Officer Ryan Phillips headed down a
darkening side street for a meal break. "All I had was, I got two
juveniles," he said. "They were holding them at Toys `R' Us. They were 10
and 11." Oh, the frustrations of being a living visual deterrent.

At least the shopkeepers were grateful. "There are less crazy people
hanging around," said Steve Singh, a manager at Top USA Electronics. "Less
fights on the avenue, less headaches, you know?"

The next day, things picked up again. Officer Edward Bonnie caught a man
stealing soda from a delivery truck. Officer Yolanda Gutierrez broke up a
street fight. Then a call came in. Four men were smoking marijuana in the
hallway of an apartment building. It was Officer Beigay's post. He brought
back two suspects and 27 bags of marijuana.

As he climbed to the building's sixth floor, he said later: "I was praying
like, please, let those guys still be there. It felt good at first. Then
you realize all the paperwork you got to do, and that kind of kills the
excitement."

But staying late into the night, vouchering evidence and filling out forms,
was not a total loss. Just after 10 p.m., Officer Beigay and his partner
could be seen huddled together, discussing their overtime.