SIGN OF DRUG RING'S PRESENCE: TENANT MEETING WAS QUIET, TOO QUIET

Last March, the police went to a tenant association meeting at a Brooklyn
housing development expecting an earful about a growing drug problem in
Coney Island. But when a detective asked the gathered residents about drug
sales, he was met with silence.

The police soon learned that the muted response had nothing to do with
whether the residents of Ocean Towers, a federally subsidized housing
complex, were troubled by a thriving drug trade there. The tenants so
feared reprisals by drug dealers, who they believed were sitting in their
midst as the police fielded questions, that no one spoke up, police
officials said yesterday.

A detective at the meeting sensed their discomfort and distributed business
cards, and a short while later, his phone began to ring with tips from the
residents, including confirmation that the dealers sometimes attended the
meetings. Those calls, and the 10-month undercover investigation they
prompted, led to the arrests of 25 people, Police Commissioner Raymond W.
Kelly said at a news conference yesterday.

The suspects included the main supplier of crack to the housing development
- - who the police said worked as a teacher's assistant at a Park Slope
middle school - and the main supplier of crack to all of Coney Island, Mr.
Kelly said. Also among those charged was the night shift security
supervisor at the development, who, Mr. Kelly said, used his position to
conduct drug deals.

As a result of a new strategy in investigating and prosecuting such cases,
all but two of those arrested have been charged with conspiracy and will
face lengthy prison terms if convicted, said Charles J. Hynes, the Brooklyn
district attorney, who announced the arrests with Mr. Kelly.

"This case was a great example of members of the community and the police
working together to rid the neighborhood of drug dealers," Mr. Kelly said.
Those charged, he added, "intimidated their neighbors, and they were
responsible for numerous robberies and other crimes in the area."

As part of the investigation, detectives and police officers from the
Brooklyn South Narcotics Division made 81 undercover drug purchases at the
development, Mr. Kelly said. Investigators also bought five illegal
handguns during the 10 months, and the police estimated that the group sold
about $1.2 million in crack and cocaine a year, he said. One undercover
detective was so successful in buying drugs from the dealers in the
development that they swarmed his car to be the first in line to make a
sale, Mr. Kelly said.

The teaching assistant, James Opharrow, worked at Middle School 88 in Park
Slope and on one occasion arranged to meet an undercover detective after
school to sell him 35 grams of crack, Mr. Kelly said. Through Mr. Opharrow,
the police were able to track and arrest Warren Faison, who sold more than
500 grams of crack a day in Coney Island, Mr. Kelly said.

A 25-year-old woman who lives in Ocean Towers but declined to give her name
said that at times the neighborhood felt lawless. "It wasn't out of
control," she said of drug dealing in the area, "but it wasn't safe to come
out here, either. Something needed to be done."

Mr. Hynes said the case was the second in Brooklyn in which the police and
prosecutors had teamed up to use a pattern of low-level drug deals to bring
conspiracy charges against those selling narcotics in a housing
development. At the Cypress Hills Houses, 60 people were arrested last
September, and Mr. Hynes said all but one were in jail awaiting trial.