A wave of indictments against police officers in the borough's 48th Precinct could break as early as next week.
"It is going to hit pretty soon,'' said the Rev. John Flynn, pastor of St. Martin du Tours Roman Catholic Church in East Tremont.
"The arrests will be made," said Flynn, who is in close contact with the police and says one of his former students is an officer in the 48th Precinct. "I want to be around to pick up the pieces. The only thing I want to do is be a peacemaker."
Citing unidentified sources, last week's dailies said indictments against officers assigned to the stationhouse, which covers East Tremont and Belmont, are imminent.
Press officials for both the Police Department and District Attorney Robert Johnson declined comment last week.
Some precinct officers reportedly are suspected of beating people, taking money from drug suspects and selling confiscated narcotics.
Last November, federal agents investigating a money-laundering operation connected with the Cali Columbian drug cartel arrested a precinct cop after he allegedly stowed a bag holding $1 million in his locker.
In January, another officer was caught on videotape apparently stealing $210 from a suspect and a third was arrested in February and charged with drug selling.
"We have been trying to keep a good relationship between the community and the police, and in many ways we haven't," said Flynn, who patrols the neighborhood twice a week. "There have been a lot of rumors of stories where the police have not done the right thing. I don't know if they are substantiated or not."
"The kids have talked about how tough the police are," he said.
Standing on East Tremont Avenue last week, Nitty Thomas, 22, said police had detained him without pressing charges on two occasions. "If you get beat up," he said, "and you press charges they will constantly harass you on the streets. If you don't, they will leave you alone."
He said officers had raided a sidewalk drug operation in front of a grocery on Hughes Street last August and left after taking the drugs and money. The cops, he said, "didn't arrest anybody."
In a report released in February by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the 48th Precinct was one of four Bronx precincts, along with the 46th, the 47th and the 44th, that lead the city in complaints of police brutality. The 48th had 73 complaints lodged against it in 1994, a 44 percent increase from 1993.
But Edna McGill, 70, who has served on the 48th Precinct Council for 10 years, said she recently stopped four officers to tell them the neighborhood supports them.
"I took a consensus in the neighborhood the other day and the police are law abiding," said McGill who lives in the Dennis Lane Co-ops on Crotona Ave. "There was only one young lady I spoke to who gave a negative response. But that's because she doesn't obey the law."