When Danny Cabero returned recently from two years in prison for drug possession he hardly recognized his old turf in Washington Heights, where streets were once congested with young men hawking drugs to drive-by addicts, and guns and knives were preferred means of communication.
"It's quiet," said Mr. Cabero, 20, who went back this spring to the northern Manhattan neighborhood that became a landmark in the nation's cocaine crisis. "They have less people selling drugs in the street. Less people robbing. One thing you can say about Washington Heights: you can walk down the street here and be safe."
Although there is no evidence that the drug trade has diminished significantly, it has become less violent. With the sharp decline in the city's crime rate, Washington Heights offers evidence that the deadly edge of the drug business has dulled, at least momentarily, with police strategies more effective and some turf wars between dealers now settled.
In 1991, when those wars were raging, 119 people were killed in Washington Heights; last year the number fell to 56. Shootings dropped by a quarter from 1993 to 1994. And possibly as a result of an increased police presence in the neighborhood, reports of other crimes, like auto theft and grand larceny, fell significantly last year.
With legions of former drug sellers now consigned to either cells or coffins, both the police and residents say there are fewer new recruits taking their places on the streets.
Everyone has his own barometer for the drop in crime. The Rev. Earl Kooperkamp of the Church of the Intercession, at 155th Street and Broadway, says he is rarely harassed by drug dealers now. "It used to be constant," he said. "When I was driving around making parish visits -- a white guy in a Jeep -- it was constant soliciting: 'Hey, Popi. What do you want? What do you want?' "
While new programs in Washington Heights are offering youths alternatives to the street and more tenant groups are fighting drugs in their buildings, the biggest changes in crime appear linked to police efforts and changes in the drug trade.
These days, the police see more organization and sophistication among dealers, whose operations have been forced from the streets into apartment buildings by years of enforcement pressure. Narcotics officers say knots of street dealers have been replaced by a handful of "steerers" on the sidewalk, directing customers to apartments outfitted as sales offices. The men on the street use electronic buzzers and walkie-talkies to warn those inside about the nearby police.
Many of the apartments are furnished with nothing more than a desk or two, scales for weighing drugs and nearly invisible custom-made compartments for hiding contraband. When officers raided an apartment on 190th Street recently, they made five arrests and seized 25 pounds of cocaine and two guns. But what surprised them most was the network of video cameras trained on the street to spot police activity.
Many drug dealers now use one apartment for transactions and others, blocks away, to stash larger amounts of drugs and money. And the police say cars are being customized so that the push of a hidden button opens a secret compartment in the dashboard.
"It's more secretive and better hidden now," said Richard Wells, a police officer in Washington Heights for the last four years. "It was so blatant before."
The crack explosion of the mid-1980's transformed the side streets of Washington Heights into wholesale cocaine supermarkets minutes from New Jersey, Westchester County and other parts of the city. In July 1986, in an undercover political event to show how open the selling had become, Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the United States Attorney in Manhattan, put on a leather vest and sunglasses, and together with Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, who wore a windbreaker and Army cap, bought crack as part of a buy-and-bust operation on 160th Street.
The market overwhelmed both the police and the new Dominican population, which had grown in Washington Heights since the mid-1970's.
Washington Heights, with a population of about 300,000, remains one of the most dangerous parts of the city and is still a favored destination for cocaine buyers. The police also say heroin -- which preceded cocaine as the main drug available in the neighborhood -- is now being sold with increasing frequency.
But much is different. The number of police officers has increased to 445 from 338 in the last two years. The police precinct itself has been split in two, creating a second station house for the neighborhood.
Community policing programs, expanded under the Dinkins administration, have more officers walking beats. And new powers granted to street officers by the Giuliani administration allow them to investigate and arrest drug sellers, augmenting the department's narcotics division, which previously handled most drug investigations. Through mid-December, the police made more than 2,800 drug arrests in Washington Heights in 1994, nearly 35 percent more than in 1993.
"A couple of years ago, we'd see these guys in the street; we knew they were drug dealers, but we'd just pass them by," said Dennis Rodriguez, an officer who has patrolled some of the most drug-infested streets of Washington Heights. "Maybe we would just tell them to move on. But when you went off the block, they came back. We were handcuffed."
The department has tried a variety of other strategies, including seizing the cars of buyers who travel across the George Washington Bridge and from other areas to make their purchases. And although the volume of the drug business cannot be measured, both the police and residents say it has slowed slightly.
The crackdown has pushed some drug activity south to Harlem, and some New York drug dealers have moved to less competitive markets upstate and in other East Coast cities, say both the police and others familiar with the drug business.
The trade still comprises mostly small operations, each run by fewer than a dozen people, the police say. The difference now is that is that fewer of these operations exist. "On one block you could have three or four major players," Mr. Rodriguez said. "Five years ago on these blocks you could hardly get down the street, there were so many guys. And there were shootouts all the time because of the competition."
Police officials say those battles -- which drew police attention and hurt the drug business -- have been quelled to some degree by understandings between dealers about who controls which areas.
"It's like the Mafia," said John Coyne, a lieutenant in the 33d Precinct in the lower half of Washington Heights. "You go back 50 or 60 years and they were killing each other right and left, but you put someone in charge, and they know the rules and they don't kill each other as much."
To community leaders, the reduction in crime also reflects an evolution of the immigrant community, which has increased its political power and expanded organizations to combat a host of ills, from apartment overcrowding to the high rate of school dropouts.
"It's the normal growth and development of the community," said Victor Morisete, the executive director of the Community Association of Progressive Dominicans. "When you have a stake in where you live, you will think differently, you will treat that area differently, and crime is one of the things that is affected."
A turning point for the neighborhood was five days of disturbances in July 1990 ignited by the killing of Jose (Kiko) Garcia, a drug suspect, by Officer Michael O'Keefe during a scuffle. Although the officer was cleared of any wrongdoing, the killing raised the suspicions of many residents that the police were abusive and corrupt.
At the time, crime seemed boundless, and the influx of young immigrants had overwhelmed the already-crowded schools. Many had turned to the drug trade.
"I felt that perhaps we were threatened in a way we never were before," said Guillermo Linares, who in 1991 became the first Dominican immigrant elected to the City Council. "It was overwhelming to see people standing on the street and knowing that there is something going on that is not right and that the only way to confront it is if the whole community comes together to confront it."
The disturbances, with overturned cars aflame and the police under attack from flying rocks and bottles, opened a pressure valve in Washington Heights. Since then, residents' requests for more officers have been answered, and community and police officials have tried to erase stereotypes of all cops as corrupt thugs and all young immigrants as gun-packing drug dealers.
The redoubled focus on Washington Height's youths can be seen daily behind the battered brown doors of P.S. 143, where an after-school program of athletics, academics and crafts attracts hundreds of young people, from pre-teen students to former convicts wearing gang beads.
"This becomes like a surrogate home for these kids," said Eddie Silverio, a program director.
At the school on a recent night, Mr. Silverio asked Mr. Cabero about the 10 closest friends he had before he went to prison. "Those 10 people," Mr. Cabero said, "are now behind the walls of Sing Sing, Attica . . . "
Mr. Silverio motioned to another man in the room that night. Milton Martinez, 28, who described himself as the leader of the Netas gang in Washington Heights, is a former drug dealer who has served sentences for robbery and attempted murder. Released this fall, he swears he is a changed man.
Mr. Silviero said reducing crime permanently may require more than just putting people in prison and putting more police officers on the street, especially in neighborhoods where the economy is fragile and money for youth programs is scarce.
"There are no jobs," Mr. Silverio said. "What's Milton going to do to survive?"
Only in Manhattan have the numbers of felonies against people -- homicides, robberies and assaults -- fallen below the levels reported in 1985. In Staten Island and Queens, which have relatively low crime rates, the rates are far above the levels of the mid-1980's, 33 percent higher in Staten Island, 18 percent higher in Queens. And in all boroughs except Manhattan, the homicide rate is above the level reported in 1985, with Queens recording an increase of more than 40 percent through the decade.
PROPERTY FELONIES
Crimes against property, like burglary and auto theft, are also down the most in Manhattan. Since 1985 burglaries have fallen by a third in Manhattan and by almost as much in Brooklyn. Auto thefts skyrocketed from 1985 to 1990, with Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn posting increases of greater than 90 percent. Since 1990, car thefts have declined, but by not nearly as much, and remain 20 percent higher than a decade before.
