In the four months since 12 officers in the 30th Precinct in Harlem were taken away in handcuffs for dealing cocaine and protecting drug dealers, the station house has been painted, its sidewalks replaced, the lighting improved. Officers now wear their shoes shined like Marine boots and their hair cut as short as golf course fairways.
That's just the cosmetics. Where spotty supervision once led to illegal drug searches -- "booming doors," it was called -- there is today at least one sergeant at every drug arrest. Each platoon has a full-time lieutenant. New narcotics strategies are in place, and arrests are up 24 percent in the last four months, compared with the same period last year.
There are still moments when neighborhood residents jeer officers as they make arrests. It will take more than four months before the 30th sheds its tarnished reputation, if it ever does. But life in the precinct has changed, and many say it is for the better.
"I'm sure the blue wall of silence is still there," said Hazel O'Reilly, president of the 100-member 30th Precinct Community Council, a group that consults with the police and government agencies to improve the neighborhood. "But I see a change. They are trying."
Signs hanging around the precinct that said, "Corruption Should Be Reported to Internal Affairs Bureau," have been edited by hand so that "should" now reads "must." Deputy Inspector Thomas P. Sweeney, the new commander of the 30th, said this week that he personally made that change, and demanded that officers come directly to him with information on corruption.
But at the same time, to shore up morale, Inspector Sweeney had complimentary letters from the community read at roll calls and organized summer picnics so people could get to know the officers who patrol their neighborhood.
As a sign that morale is improving, absenteeism among officers is down by 25 percent in recent months. "You see smiles coming back," said Officer Thomas E. Caruso. "The motivation is returning."
With at least one more round of arrests expected, morale is bound to be tested. And the precinct is still rife with rumors of rogue officers, as well as spies wearing body wires.
"There may be more people taken out in handcuffs," Inspector Sweeney said. "Our people worry, but I tell them, 'Sure, Internal Affairs is out there watching, but don't worry if you're not stealing.' " He is so confident that he has turned his station house around that he made an assertion few other precinct commanders would dare: "I will bet my career that there are no criminal activities committed now by officers working in the precinct."
Inspector Sweeney, a 45-year-old bulldog of a man, is central to what his precinct likes to call "the new and improved Three-O." With 22 years' experience as an Army Reserve officer, he projects a no-nonsense military manner.
City Councilman Adam Clayton Powell 4th, a Harlem Democrat who has been highly critical of the Police Department, called Inspector Sweeney "a decent guy."
"There's definitely been an improvement," Mr. Powell said.
He was ordered to take command of the 30th at 5:30 A.M. on April 15 in the station house's 151st Street parking lot, just hours after the first wave of corruption arrests in the precinct. "Frankly," he said, "I was overwhelmed."
Heavy Responsibility
He was allowed to hand pick a corps of supervisors from around the city, and he had the help of the department's citywide gun and narcotics units, which flooded the area to fight drug dealers hoping to take advantage of a paralyzing scandal.
But the brunt of the responsibility to fulfill Commissioner William J. Bratton's public promise to recreate the 30th as one of the most effective precincts in the city remained his alone.
"I was ordered to be as unorthodox and innovative as I need to be," Inspector Sweeney said. "My objective was to get the precinct functioning normally by midsummer. We've done that. Now we're aiming to be the model precinct."
He and his staff of supervisors have gone beyond Commissioner Bratton's new anti-crime strategies, and despite mixed results, he is being praised in the department as an example of what the Commissioner wants: more powerful precinct commanders freed from the middle management at borough command centers and encouraged to find creative solutions to community problems.
When the neighborhood was hit by a recent rash of burglaries, Inspector Sweeney ordered patrol officers to interview every victim in order to piece together patterns. Then he set up undercover posts to survey blocks most likely to get hit. Finally, he expanded the number of officers trained to lift fingerprints from 4 to 20 to diminish the reliance on the precinct's overworked detectives.
Disappointed Expectations
Two weeks ago, the precinct began Operation Chariot, an extension of Mr. Bratton's strategy to reduce disorder and improve the quality of life . Using noise meters, patrol officers have seized more than 75 cars from drivers who played their radios over 80 decibels.
Noise may seem the least of the precinct's problems, given that northwest Harlem is one of the country's prime wholesale cocaine centers. But Inspector Sweeney hopes that car searches will lead to the confiscation of drugs and guns.
So far, precinct supervisors readily concede, neither the burglary nor the noise strategy has panned out as well as expected. And, after a short-lived decline in reported felony offenses, reported crime in the 30th Precinct is on the rise again this summer, even though arrests are also up.
Inspector Sweeney's most effective program may be one to enlist landlords and building owners to sign affidavits asking for the police to crack down on trespassers as a way of curbing drug sales in apartment buildings and giving officers rosters of tenants.
Undercover police officers with binoculars watch suspects come and go, then radio to narcotics officers to stop them. When suspects cannot prove that they live in a building or are visiting a tenant, they are arrested for trespassing and searched. They are typically found to have small amounts of cocaine.
At the station house, the suspects are questioned and offered deals in return for information on drug trafficking or other crimes.
Still, two days with Inspector Sweeney this week showed how far he has to go to reach his goal of turning around the precinct he calls "the coke capital of the Western Hemisphere."
Most of Tuesday, he attended to plans for National Night Out, the annual effort to bring people and police officers into the streets together. He led a community march through the neighborhood that ended with a rally at Riverbank State Park.
Like a politician working the crowd, he courted good will, in one instance helping some boys get free passes to a roller-skating pavilion. But he left quickly after hearing a radio call about shots fired on Broadway at 152d Street in what sounded at first like a drug-related shooting.
A motorcycle rider had fired a pistol at a man standing in the doorway of a clothing store and then sped away. As he was driven to the scene, the inspector worried. "You don't want a crowd gathering, saying, 'Why not take him to the hospital?' " he said. "Then, the bottles come from the back of the crowd."
After learning that the rider had sped away, that no one had been hit by gunfire, and that the intended victim, wounded by flying glass, had been taken care of, Inspector Sweeney returned to the park for a cold hamburger.
Nightly Gunshots
Wednesday was a day of meetings. In one session, with a couple complaining of drug dealing on their block, he was delighted to hear that precinct telephone operators had become more polite and responsive. In another, he listened to six women who live near the intersection of Amsterdam Avenue and 140th Street complain of nightly gunshots and drug dealers so brazen that people could not pick tomatoes from their community garden in peace.
"Within a few months," Inspector Sweeney promised, "you'll see some improvement."
Outside the station house that day, he noticed an angry crowd on Broadway surrounding officers confiscating a red Chevrolet Blazer, its speakers blaring rap.
"That's our culture!" one man cried out. "Nobody ever died of loud music. And they are all white too!" As officers separated the loudest complainers from the rest of the crowd, Inspector Sweeney folded his arms and shook his head.
"You can't please all of the people all of the time," he said. Gradually, the crowd broke up, and he return to his desk and a pile of paperwork.
