By Edward Lewine, Staff Reporter
With drugs and car-stripping leading the list, the 46th Precinct is one of the most crime-ridden in New York, according to police.
"This place is full of life," said Officer Danny Alfiero, 32, sitting in his car one night. "But there's a lot of crime here and a lot of arrests."
Officers say the precinct, which includes the Fordham, University Heights, Morris Heights and Mount Hope neighborhoods, is a rewarding place to work. But they say that language barriers and aggressive behavior come between them and the community, making policing difficult.
The 46th Precinct is unusually small in area, with over 118,000 people living within 1.32 square miles. Over half the residents are Hispanic; most of the rest are black.
Lieut. Bob Mariani, an administrator at the 46th, said it was the third-busiest precinct in the city last year, but in terms of crimes per square mile it was the busiest. There were also 119 allegations of brutality there, the sixth highest in the city.
"We hook 'em and book 'em here," said Alfiero. "We lead the city in arrests and its hard not to have a lot of complaints."
Alfiero and his partner Lenny Lantz say there can be distrust between English-speaking police and the largely Spanish-speaking population.
"I'd be a little intimidated if I had a police officer who doesn't speak my language come to my house," Alfiero said.
Mariani says there can be problems when aggressive police officers come into contact with aggressive men on the street.
"Better than half the arrests made we have to use force," he said.
The precinct has been in the news following the death of Anthony Baez, 29, who was killed in a scuffle with police last December, and there have been demonstrations by the community highlighting problems with police brutality.
Most of the crime in the neighborhood, however is not as high profile as the Baez case.
"Ninety percent of the crime is either directly or indirectly related to crack," said Mariani.
Officers said crack dealing mostly occurs where Sedgewick Avenue turns into West Tremont, on East Tremont by the Grand Concourse and on Davidson and Jerome Avenues.
The second-biggest problem, they said, is people using deserted streets to dismantle stolen cars.
But in such a busy neighborhood the police encounter a variety of crimes. On a typical eight-hour shift, Alfiero and Lantz will respond to about 10 calls from the 911 radio dispatcher for everything from pregnant women to gun battles.
For the first week of February, there were no murders or rapes reported in the precinct, Mariani said, and there were 15 muggings, 30 burglaries and 15 assaults.
That's the bad news. The good news: In 1995, crime is down in the 46th.