PRESENCE OF POLICE TRANSFORMS STREETS OF PHILADELPHIA

PHILADELPHIA - The narrow streets of this city's ''Little Puerto Rico''
used to look like a busy carwash, with cocaine customers lined up in idling
cars to make buys.

These days the same streets are virtually deserted, but the sidewalks and
front steps of decaying row houses in the neighborhood have blossomed with
children running at play, elderly people chatting, and small knots of men
and women just hanging out.

The mayor, John Street, has declared war on street-corner drug dealers in
low-income neighborhoods of Philadelphia like Little Puerto Rico, and so
far he is winning. It is a war of visibility that does not rely on mass
arrests in street sweeps. Since May, uniformed police officers have been
posted on 300 corners identified as open-air drug markets, and their
presence has pretty much chased away the cocaine and heroin dealers and
their customers.

Operation Safe Streets, a first step in the mayor's $300 million plan to
obliterate urban blight, has changed life this summer in neighborhoods
where for more than 15 years drug-dealing on street corners has been a
dangerous fixture. It has virtually disappeared, the number of violent
crimes has decreased, cooperation between residents and police has surged,
and enrollment in drug-treatment programs has spiked, according to city
officials.

''We just show our presence,'' said Stephen Lyons, a police officer who
does street duty. ''It's like a game of cat and mouse, and right now we're
winning.''

Ines Vega, a resident for 13 years of North Philadelphia's ''Badlands'' -
an area that encompasses Little Puerto Rico - is grateful for the visible
police presence.

''It's safe for summer. It keeps the buyers out,'' Vega said. ''The streets
are more calmer. There used to be so much traffic. Now you can walk.''

Street declared the operation ''an unqualified success'' during an
interview last week.

''I wanted to bring this part of the community under control,'' the mayor
said. ''And I realized we weren't going to be able to arrest our way out of
it.''

Street refused to disclose how much the city is paying in overtime to
officers like Lyons, who said he has averaged an extra 30 hours a week
since the operation began.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has quoted a city official as estimating that
Safe Streets costs the city about $4 million a month.

Similar operations undertaken in other cities have usually displaced drug
trafficking to other areas, rather than wiping it out, according to Edward
Tully, executive director of Major Cities Chiefs, which represents the
heads of the 60 largest police departments in the United States and Canada.

''Open-air drug dealing is a problem in every community in the United
States. Philadelphia is not alone,'' Tully said. ''As long as the demand
exists, it will be serviced.''

Street and the police commissioner, Sylvester Johnson, who together devised
Safe Streets, said it will need continued community support to remain
effective.

So far the police operation has proved to be popular with city residents.
Last Monday night, after the Safe Streets program was scaled back in a part
of South Philadelphia, a 12-year-old girl was one of four people wounded in
a gun battle that erupted on a street corner there. Neighborhood residents
have since demanded that the police presence in the neighborhood be
restored to its previous level.

Since the city launched the operation, drug dealers have been forced
indoors, and an unprecedented number of tipsters have reported the dealers'
new locations in residences to police. In the four months from Jan. 1 to
May 2, when the operation started, about 250 people called police with tips
about drug dealing.

But in the three and a half months since then, that number has jumped to
7,000, Johnson said. The police commissioner said the department tries to
raid each new drug-dealing location within 24 hours of its being reported.

Because other dealers have switched to peddling their illegal wares from
bicycles, Johnson said, police have increased bicycle patrols, following
suspected dealers the same way regular officers have shadowed them on
street corners.

In its latest phase, the operation has deployed more undercover officers.

''It's like a chess game,'' Johnson said. ''As we changed, they changed. We
understand that.''

Deayoung Park said cycling on drug patrol adds an element of surprise.

''It's a gratifying feeling when you come up on somebody from behind on a
bike. They never see you until it's too late; then they get this look,'' he
said.

The impact of the Safe Streets program was almost immediate. Major crime
dropped by 12 percent in May, and by 16 percent in June, compared to the
same months in the previous year.

During the period between May and mid-August a year ago, 37 of 85 murders
in the city were ruled to be drug-related. This year, of the 81 murders
committed during that same period, 16 were drug-related.

The numbers of robberies and aggravated assaults fell by about 20 percent
compared to May to mid-August 2001, Johnson said. Antidrug patrols have
been aided by a new state program that allows authorities to seize a
vehicle from a driver who does not have a proper license, insurance
coverage, or registration.

City health department officials have reported a 30 percent increase in
people enrolled in drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, Street said.

Johnson said the biggest payoff has been the improved quality of life in
affected neighborhoods.

''To me, numbers are not important. Last year we made 37,000 arrests for
drugs, confiscated over $4 million in cash, $48 million in drug
confiscations, and as far as most law enforcement people would say, we''
were ''doing a good job,'' the police commissioner said. ''But I say it
doesn't matter. If you still can't come out your house, and kids still
can't come out and play, then we haven't done anything.''

Johnson said some residents have complained that the city is spending too
much money in drug-infested neighborhoods, rather than in their own. ''And
I tell them they might not have open-air drug sales, but their children are
the buyers in these other neighborhoods. So this is helping them, too,'' he
said.

Johnson said Street would disclose in the next two weeks the cost of the
operation.

Street said he considers it more important ''to improve the quality of life
of people living in these neighborhoods,'' and for that reason he has so
far avoided addressing the cost issue.

''Less crime, less violence - that's pretty good evidence of success,'' the
mayor said.'' But the other thing is the new bond between the police and
community. I have never seen anything like the new bond between the police
in the neighborhoods and the people.''

Before Operation Safe Streets began, Street said, ''because police were
driving by drug dealers for years and not doing anything, people believed
police must be in on it.''

Officer Michael Soto said that when children see him in the Badlands now
they yell, ''Hi, cop!'' For the first time in years in those neighborhoods,
Soto said, ''You see kids riding bikes, parents outside, families together.''