WHOSE NEIGHBORHOOD?

IT was a serene barbecue in the back garden of a town house on West 141st
Street. The roses were magenta. Chicken sizzled. A toddler giggled as he
tasted his first mulberry. But the talk quickly turned to the unwanted
visitors who haunted the stoop. As birds cheeped, the host described his
two-year battle to get the men to move.

"Tar is too messy," he said. "We sprinkled lime to spoil their trousers,
but they simply put cardboard on top. We splashed buckets of Pine-Sol to
wash away the stink of their urine, but it evaporated.

"The only thing which works is negotiation. We struck a deal with the
ringleader that we wouldn't call the cops if his boys kept off the
property. The problem is, the old bunch were arrested, and we have to train
these new guys."

It is not easy to have cocaine dealers work from your doorstep. They
commandeer all the parking spaces, block the entrance and urinate on the
stoop. Before Sept. 11, the police described this sliver of Harlem as
ground zero because Broadway, between the 137th and 145th Street subway
stops, is the main distribution point in the Northeast for millions, if not
billions, of dollars in cocaine.

But as the neighborhood has gentrified in the past few years, it has become
a surreal world in which the middle-class values of urban homesteaders
collide with the gritty street reality of "Traffic."

For those living in this illicit open-air bazaar, the reminders start the
moment they step out to get the morning newspaper. Residents carry brooms
to sweep up bottles and gnawed ribs left by dealers the night before.
Coming home from work, they must weave and bob like halfbacks through
throngs of young Dominican dealers taking orders on cellphones. Hundreds of
men block the sidewalks, passing packages hand-to-hand or into the tinted
windows of Jeep Cherokees. Merengue blaring from radios placed on car hoods
makes living-room windows shiver.

Nearly all the local stores cater to dealers, not residents. There are
suppliers of cellphones, for keeping in touch with clients. There is
24-hour money-wiring to send earnings back home. Nail salons offer shelter
from the rain - and the police. Clothing stores sell the dealers' uniforms
- - black, puffy North Face jackets in winter, white untucked T-shirts in summer.

To the exasperation and sometimes anger of longtime black residents and
white and black middle-class pioneers, the dealers work hard, keeping
trading hours as fixed as Wall Street's. Nearly all are Dominicans, many
from poor villages, who can make more money in one day selling cocaine - as
much as $1,000 - than in a month back home. Their customers are
wholesalers, rich men in S.U.V.'s who travel the East Coast from Miami to
New England. Drugs are stored in apartment buildings and handed in person
by mobile units that roam Broadway like an occupying force.

When the police pushed the drug trade out of Washington Heights in the
1980's, dealers found an ideal alternative to the south. Easy access to the
George Washington Bridge and the West Side Highway served clients well. The
dealers found protection in this close-knit Dominican community.

Despite the best efforts of the police and the complaints of the growing
number of new residents, the neighborhood still belongs to the dealers,
even though the streets are cleaner than they were two years ago. As
gentrification creeps north of Columbia University, middle-class settlers
are fixing up 19th-century town houses that were once rooming houses, crack
dens or mere shells. Prices range from $450,000 for a place that needs
total renovation to $750,000 for one in good shape. On 141st and 142nd
Streets combined, more than a dozen properties have been renovated in the
past two years. And with every teacher and musician who moves in, there are
more calls to 911 to report drug activity.

A Day in the Life

Here's a typical workday on 141st Street between Broadway and Amsterdam.

11 a.m. The dealers show up for trading, easing out of livery cabs from the
Bronx. They take up positions on both sides of the street, assume
sovereignty of their brick and asphalt trading floor. They squat-sit on
milk crates, slouch against parked cars, work their cellphones:

"Thirty pesos a gram."

"Five, fine."

"The bodega."

"The usual."

11:30 a.m. One dealer is unlucky. He sells a kilo (2.2 pounds) of cocaine
to two undercover narcotics agents from the Police Department. As the
dealer is handcuffed, his colleagues scatter to a traffic island on
Broadway, as if they're playing a high-stakes game of tag. "Llevaron"
("They got him"), one says into a two-way radio as he trots into the
dry-cleaner's on the corner. The agents hold up the cocaine like a trophy
trout. "You're bringing down the neighborhood," one agent says to dealer.

"No es mio, no es mio," the suspect murmurs as he's led to an unmarked car.
The officer turns to a reporter: "You can photograph him, but not the car.
We want to come back."

Noon Women hang out of apartment windows and set lawn chairs up on the
pavement to keep watch.

1 p.m. The dealers' ringleader, an elegant man jangling with gold chains,
prowls the block, talking on his cellphone. The dealers return. A patrol
car approaches. They dart into an apartment building. 1:30 p.m. A dealer
fishes into his sock and walks toward a man ambling down the street,
handing him a plastic-wrapped package like a baton in a relay.

2 p.m. Lunch. "Mango, mango," calls a vendor, pushing a cart packed with
fruit sculptured like flowers. The dealers study menus taped to a lamppost
on the corner. Two illegal restaurants that operate out of apartment
kitchens, La Chory and Sazon Gladys, advertise this way. The fellows phone
in orders for fried chicken, rice and kidney beans.

2:30 p.m. Lunches are delivered, $6 each. The dealers sit on the stoop of a
town house and toss their empty aluminum containers on the ground when
they're done. There's a trash can 30 feet away.

3 p.m. The dealers plant their crates in the middle of the sidewalk. A
women pushing a stroller tries to pass. The men move, slightly. A police
car drives by. They don't look up.

5 p.m. Snack time. A tropical-ice cart rolls by. The dealers eat under the
shade of a honey locust tree, absent-mindedly picking off pieces of bark.
An elderly resident comes out and yells at them. They ignore her.

6 p.m. Traffic police check license plates of New Jersey cars parked on the
street. Word gets out about a bust on Broadway, and the dealers disperse.

8 p.m. The dealers return. Girlfriends promenade with babies. Judging from
the number of kisses and the infants, the men are popular.

8:30 p.m. "Pig!" a woman yells from a window as a dealer urinates on a car.

10:45 p.m. Three men in braids check the rim of the front wheel of a car.
They look disappointed. "Where is it? You said it would be there," one
demands into his cellphone.

An Old-Boy Network

The police are all too aware of how drug operations have transformed the
neighborhood. And, in fact, there has been some improvement over the past
year. But serious problems persist. A major obstacle the police cite is
complicity in the community.

Undercover Police Department narcotics agents have trouble infiltrating an
old-boy network that depends on relatives and boyhood friends. Although
plenty of local Dominicans don't deal drugs, traffickers are often
protected by their countrymen. And given that many families have relatives
who have overstayed their visas, they are not going to call the police to
report drug action.

Local merchants also depend on the drug trade. When the police parked a van
on the corner of 141st Street and Broadway last year, shopkeepers grumbled
to the Civilian Complaint Review Board that they were losing customers. The
police moved it.

Juan's Unisex on 140th Street is one of many businesses that tolerate the
dealers. Near the entrance is a big sign, in Spanish, that reads: "Please
do not occupy seats if you are not doing anything or getting a haircut."
But on a recent morning, the barber's chairs were empty and the aquamarine
vinyl benches near the window were filled. Seven men sat there, cellphones
in hand, chatting while looking over their shoulders at the police car
parked outside.

When a woman walked in, seeking a manicure, the men quietly stared. As the
last nail was polished, a young man came through the door. He plucked from
his baggy jeans a wad of money the height of a platform shoe. The barber
shoved him toward the door, with a hard glance toward the woman.

"Come back later," the barber said. "Go play basketball or something."

The war against drugs in Harlem has gotten a fresh push from the new police
commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly. For the last two months, the police have
saturated the area with every type of unit: sniffer dogs, cyclists,
cavalry, vans, cars, foot patrols. This police presence can turn a simple
act, like getting a quart of milk, into an adventure.

Edwin Cahill, a baritone who sings opera and lives on 141st Street, was
unable to enter his house one night because 30 SWAT police in riot gear had
sealed off his street. A helicopter hovered. Mr. Cahill waited by the
barricade for 15 minutes until undercover agents with shields and battering
rams charged two apartment buildings. Three officers bearing automatic
weapons then escorted him to his door. "I would advise staying home
tonight," one officer suggested.

Such raids, in which the police regularly make hauls of five kilos of
cocaine with a street value of $150,000, occur so often that some residents
have adjusted their routines. A couple that owned a dog plotted a special
route for evening walks to avoid canine sniffer units. This decision came
after one tense night when the dog almost got into a fight with an
unleashed Rottweiler, which was circling a mound of white powder at the
corner deli.

One family routinely kept a bottle of chardonnay chilled in case of a raid.
When a bust took place, they phoned friends and invited them over to watch
this particular reality show from the comfort of their living room.

While most New Yorkers complain about scarce parking spaces, the problem is
especially severe here, because the dealers snap up spots for their
clients. Sometimes dealers sit inside a car all day, just to save a place.
For that reason, Marie King, a homeowner, decided that it wasn't worth
buying a car. When her relatives come over from New Jersey, they
double-park outside the house and Ms. King visits with them in the car.
"They come into the house only to make phone calls or use the bathroom,"
she said.

Unlikely Helping Hands

Except for McDonald's and a lonely Rite Aid pharmacy, most mainstream
retailers have shunned the area. So the neighborhood's growing middle class
cheered last summer when a Starbucks opened at 138th and Broadway.

At first, the dealers avoided the place. But soon enough, they heard about
the clean bathrooms, and since only customers are allowed to use the
toilets, the dealers have become steady buyers of takeout coffee.

"They always order ventis," a cashier said brightly, "and are great tippers."

As if on cue, a man in a white Yankees T-shirt sidled in, holding a
walkie-talkie. He mouthed, "Latte," and disappeared behind the chartreuse
door in the back. A few minutes later he walked out, leaving his change on
the counter.

Residents generally agree that while the dealers are a nuisance,
paradoxically, they keep the streets safe. The dealers don't want addicts
on the street who will attract the police, and because theirs is a
wholesale business, their S.U.V.-driving clients generally aren't the type
who mug.

The 30th Precinct, which covers western Harlem from 133rd to 155th Street,
led the city in narcotics arrests last year, with 5,103. But it reported
only 24 shootings, ranking 27th of the city's 76 precincts.

"These kids don't carry guns; they're not interested in killing anyone,"
said Stephanie Herman, a sociology professor at the John Jay College of
Criminal Justice who has studied the 136th Street drug dealers for the last
six years. "It's simply a job to support their families."

Residents swap tales about dealers who helped them carry groceries or
wheelchair-bound parents into the house. When the elderly mother of one
141st Street resident visits from Queens, the dealers offer her a parking spot.

Bradley Erickson, a fashion designer who lives on 141st Street, told how
dealers rescued a neighbor when muggers followed him into his building. "He
yelled for help," Mr. Erickson said, "and the dealers came and beat the
guys up."

Helpful or not, the police say they are determined to get as many dealers
off the street as possible.

"We're doing the best we can," Deputy Inspector Thomas Cody, commander of
the 30th Precinct, told a meeting of outraged residents this past spring.
The problem, he said, was that his men were outnumbered. There are 189
officers permanently assigned to the precinct, and another 20 temporary
officers. There are also 100 undercover narcotics agent who work the area.

An officer on patrol opposite the Starbucks, however, said they were
fighting a losing battle. "There are no grounds to search them," he said.
"It's not illegal to loiter." He pointed to seven men playing dominoes on a
nearby traffic island. Every now and then, one would get a call on his
cellphone and amble down the block. "Even if I ticketed them for spitting,"
the officer said, "they'd be back on the street tomorrow."

Police officers complain privately about judges who set low bail for repeat
offenders back, almost guaranteeing that they will soon be back on the
street. Officers also lament what they describe as a lack of support from
federal agencies like the Internal Revenue Service and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service, which they say could do more to investigate
money-laundering businesses and deport dealers who have overstayed their visas.

The I.N.S. and I.R.S. have repeatedly snubbed invitations to attend
community meetings on the drug problem. The I.R.S. has said it does not
comment on investigations that are under way; I.N.S. representatives were
not available for comment.

Many residents do believe that more could be done. They say politicians are
apathetic because they don't live in the district. The current renaissance
of black Harlem has largely passed by this Latino corner, they say. "We're
in a political no-man's land," said Yuien Chin, the leader of the Hamilton
Heights-West Harlem Community Preservation Organization.

But Robert Jackson, a Democratic city councilman who represents the area,
denied at a town meeting last month that he didn't take the district
seriously. "The drug problem here is my No. 1 issue," he said.

Even the angriest local residents admit the streets are cleaner than they
were two years ago, thanks to more police attention and fewer abandoned
houses to trade in front of. Through June 16, 2,092 drug suspects had been
arrested in the precinct. The officers mill through the streets, stopping
cars, checking out-of-town licenses, doing buy-and-bust operations.
Meanwhile, the District Attorney's office is pressuring landlords to evict
drug-trafficking tenants.

Many residents, however, wonder why, after so many crackdowns, they still
see the same faces on the street. "Look at that one, and that one, and that
one," said one woman, pointing to a cluster of men on a neighbor's stoop.
"They've been here for years."

But the dealers' numbers have shrunk, and they are less brazen. Deputy
Inspector Cody says he thinks his precinct's latest assault will make a
lasting difference.

It already has, according to Professor Herman. Some dealers she met through
her study are talking about leaving the stoops to pursue jobs in modeling
or take computer courses. "They are always asking me if I can get them a
job," she said. "One even asked me for help in writing a resume."