WITH POLICE AT DARKEST HOUR, IS DAWN COMING?

Hamilton Hill looked pretty much the way it always does when I ventured
there late Wednesday afternoon to observe the much- anticipated return of
state police patrols.

Like most middle-class white Schenectadians, I don't spend a lot of time in
the embattled neighborhood, and the prospect of making even a brief visit
there didn't thrill me, given all the bullets that have been flying around
of late.

It was gray, rainy and raw when I pulled up in front of the Boys & Girls
Club at the corner of Craig and Emmett streets - Schenectady's Ground Zero.
Even the cops were staying in their cars to keep warm, despite assurances
from police headquarters that they'd be out walking their beats. I can't
say I was very disappointed that so little was happening, and beat it out
of there before dark.

I missed the good stuff, as luck would have it: About three hours later, a
man got robbed of $30 at that very location, right under the noses of a
city police officer and state trooper, who were indeed on foot with a
couple of reporters at the time. The man said it was the fourth time he'd
been held up in a month.

The incident tells a good part of the story about Hamilton Hill: Some of
the bad guys are so brazen, so disdainful of police, so unafraid of getting
caught that they're willing (and, alas, able) to pull off a job on a night
when the neighborhood is known to be crawling with cops.

The question that must occur to most of us is why. I may not have the
answer, but I do have some thoughts.

The crime scene on the Hill - driven by the ferocious amount of drug
activity there - has clearly gotten out of hand again. It's been notorious
to greater and lesser degrees for as long as I've lived in Schenectady (25
years), and the line put out by police brass that some recent influx of
dealers from New York City is responsible for the latest wave is a lame excuse.

It's certainly the case that most of the people involved in the Hill's drug
business are out-of-towners who've come here because the living's cheap,
there's a steady demand for drugs, they can command more money for them
than in the city, and law enforcement is suspect. But everybody on the Hill
and in the Police Department has known this for at least the last decade.

In the spring of 1993, the Sunday Gazette ran a Page One story about "Baby
New York," the ominous nickname that people in the drug trade had given
Schenectady in recognition of all the dealers who had come from there to
set up shop.

The story caught the attention of Gov. Mario Cuomo, who arranged for state
police to coordinate an undercover investigation and massive raid with city
police in which nearly 100 dealers were arrested.

What happened in the aftermath of that November 1993 raid - or, more
accurately, what didn't happen - is why the problem is once again out of hand.

Who's to blame? Who besides the Police Department (from its administrators
to its vice squad to its rank-and-file patrolmen), Mayors Frank Duci and Al
Jurczynski, and the City Council? They all bear responsibility for allowing
the situation to backslide to the degree that it has, for not pursuing
creative solutions and for failing to accept - and in some cases fighting -
offers for help. Politics, laziness, ignorance and greed all played parts.

What can be done? The mayor has finally gotten off his duff and dumped
Chief Greg Kaczmarek, who may not have been responsible for the activities
of certain rogue cops, but who for any number of reasons failed to get the
job done. His replacement - whether it's a new chief or a commissioner
brought in to oversee the department - is critical.

It's got to be a hard-charger, a proven manager who can stand up to the
Police Benevolent Association - or, if he can't find a way to motivate the
rank and file, at least get around some of their insanely lucrative
contract provisions.

I'm convinced the new head guy can't be anyone from within the department
because they're all part of the same culture that contributed to its
breakdown; that tolerated cops giving drugs to informants, transporting
suspected dealers out of town and stealing their shoes, throwing eggs at
cars, hitting on women in bars and hitting them when they resisted their
boorish passes, etc.

In the meantime, the city has to figure out a way to keep more cops on the
street - especially during the summer months, when they like to spend their
bountiful supply of vacation days and everyone else (bad guys included)
likes to spend more time outdoors.

The mayor should be begging his pal in Albany, Gov. George Pataki, to let
the city keep those state troopers a little longer than the few weeks
they've been pledged. There's an election in November, and it would be a
lot easier for Schenectadians to vote for Pataki if he could leave the
troopers here on loan until then.

The city should also be wooing the county Legislature, a few of whose
members have been talking about giving the city money for new cops or
lending a few sheriff's deputies. Any and all such offers should be
graciously pursued and accepted - instead of the usual fretting over
political implications - and if the cops' union puts up a fuss, the mayor
should sock it to 'em.

Hamilton Hill may not be quite the "war zone" it's been called, but it's
far from a safe neighborhood, and the drug activity and gunplay there are
hurting the city at a time that a renaissance is starting to take hold.

All the economic development in the world won't bring people downtown, or
to other areas of the city, if the streets are perceived as being unsafe.
And even though the violence in Schenectady has been confined to a few
neighborhoods and mostly involves the drug underworld, it's not exactly
doing wonders for the city's reputation.