Crime down, but tactics questioned

By Joe Lamport
Managing Editor

On a warm night not too long ago, Tony Quarterman said police searched him and found that he was carrying Viagra, the prescription drug for men. He had a prescription for six pills, but only had five pills with him.

"'Where's the other pill,'" Quarterman said the police officer asked. "I told him, 'Stay with me long enough and you'll find out.'"

The story gave people listening in on a recent Saturday afternoon a good laugh, but it pointed to a serious problem that many Highbridge residents speak of: While crime may very well be down in the city, including Highbridge, as police statistics show, the means that police have used to achieve that end are troubling.

"To the police it's gotten better," said Quarterman, a 30-year Highbridge resident. While Quarterman conceded he feels safer today than he did a few years ago, the techniques police use are too rigorously employed.

"They're doing their job, but they're going a little overboard," he said. Specifically, police stop and search people regularly - and they have done that in Highbridge long before terrorist attacks made such a tactic more defensible perhaps.

A young woman who did not give her name agreed.

"The only one I'm scared of is the police," she said.

A police spokesman said police did not randomly stop and search people.

"If we receive a 911 call or a radio run and we have a description of someone, we may stop someone who fits that description - that's what we do," said Det. Kevin Czartoryski. "People are not stopped for no reason."

People acting suspiciously might also be stopped, Czartoryski said, adding that people who believe they have been unjustifiably stopped and searched should file complaints with the city's Civilian Complaints Review Board.

Deputy Commander James Essig of the 44th Precinct invited residents to the police council meeting, which is held the second Wednesday of each month to help address crime in the precinct.

"You have to let us know what's going on," Essig said.

Crime generally increases in the summer, when warmer weather brings people out, Essig said.

"There're more people on the street," he said. "Crime goes up a little, but not drastically."

Community residents' number one complaint, he said, is drug dealing. The drug trade is so prevalent, some people have said that drugs are basically legal in the Bronx. A reporter was able to arrange the purchase of marijuana in about two minutes on a recent afternoon.

Beyond drug dealing, Essig said community residents complain mainly about "quality of life" problems in their neighborhoods - people playing loud music, drinking beer on the streets, rowdiness and the like.

"We focus on burglaries, assaults and things like that, but you're biggest complaint is quality of life," he said. "If those go unchecked, they lead to the bigger crimes."

Aggressive enforcement and community involvement are the main elements of the police department's strategy to tackle crime, said Det. Stephen Wattley, a community affairs officer at the 44th Precinct.

"You have to get people involved," Wattley said. "If young people see who you are, we can help them avoid the pitfalls. They need to know that not every cop is against you."

Wattley was heavily engaged in the community involvement approach during the Highbridge Gardens health fair on a sunny Saturday recently.

"Those who know, know that this is how you have to do it," he said with a friendly grin as he and fellow officers stood on University Avenue amid the festivities.

The 44th Precinct is taken off the high-crime watch list