PHILADELPHIA PUMPS UP ITS BIKE-POLICE SQUAD IN WAR ON DRUGS

94 Joined The Squad, Bringing The Total To About 200. They Netted Five
Suspected Dealers On Their First Day.

You've seen city bicycle police wearing easy-to-spot bright-yellow
windbreakers. Now, get used to seeing - or, maybe, not seeing quite
soon enough - bike police in stealthy, dark-blue jackets.

The officers are the 94 members of the department's Narcotics Strike
Force who volunteered for bicycle duty and underwent 40 hours of
special training, and were deployed yesterday in eastern North
Philadelphia on a mission to suppress street-corner drug dealing.

Later, they will be assigned to track down and surprise drug dealers
elsewhere in Philadelphia.

Presumably, the officers will be less obvious than their comrades in
yellow. Indeed, by 6 p.m. yesterday, they had already arrested five
suspected drug dealers.

The city's expanded emphasis on neighborhood policing - there are now
about 200 bike officers - comes as the latest statistics show that
major crime in Philadelphia fell 11 percent in 2002, the largest drop
in four years.

Burglaries, thefts and stolen cars fell 13 percent, while homicides,
rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults dropped about 5 percent.

Along with a big drop in murder, gunpoint robberies fell 11 percent
between 2001 and 2002.

"In the year 2003, we plan to make a bigger difference," said
Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson at a Center City ceremony marking
the deployment.

Part of the crime reduction is attributed to Operation Safe Streets,
the eight-month-old program that has emphasized foot and bike patrols
to suppress what had been a flourishing street-corner drug trade at
about 300 locations.

The drug dealing and subsequent violent crime terrified residents of
those poor communities.

"This is not a program simply designed to produce good statistics,"
said Street, who yesterday rode with bicycle officers from the
Frankford Arsenal to the Convention Center for the ceremony. "We're
also getting livable neighborhoods.

If people still couldn't walk to the corner ... it wouldn't make a
hill of difference" that crime statistics are down, Street said.

Street spoke while wearing one of the new two-tone blue police
bicycling jackets.

Sgt. Daniel Dutch, who volunteered for bike duty, said the officers'
training was divided between tactical practice and physical
conditioning, including at least one 26-mile bicycle ride.

The East Division, where the new officers were deployed, runs roughly
from the Delaware River to Broad Street, between Frankford and
Northern Liberties.

In recent years, the area has accounted for a large proportion of drug
arrests in the city and was considered a hub of drug
trafficking.

Yesterday offered a bit of anecdotal evidence that the conditioning
required to patrol on bicycle may indeed help police move faster than
the average drug dealer.

Street, a longtime bicyclist, was clasping a small water bottle in the
crook of his arm as he took questions from reporters, while still
dressed in his bike gear.

The bottle slipped and fell toward the floor, but the 60-year-old
mayor swooped down and grabbed the container while it was still two
feet above the carpet.

"Make sure you get that in," the pleased mayor told reporters.