1,000 COPS TO BLITZ DRUG HOT SPOTS

Nearly 1,000 more narcotics cops will hit the streets of Queens and The
Bronx next month in an unprecedented escalation of the city's war on drugs,
The Post has learned. "We are continuing in the war on driving drug
traffickers out of New York City," Police Commissioner Howard Safir said,
noting that 80 percent of all homicides in the city are drugrelated.

Between 60 and 80 percent of all people arrested in the city have cocaine,
marijuana or heroin in their system at the time of arrest, he noted.

The police will begin phasing in the extra manpower next month assigning
more than 400 cops to The Bronx's Motthaven, Hunts Point, Parkchester and
Soundview sections and at least 500 to Jamaica, South Jamaica, St. Albans,
Laurelton and Springfield Gardens in Queens.

The new narcs will patrol known drug areas, issuing qualityoflife
summonses and conducting building searches important because only 15
percent of the city's illegal narcotics trafficking now takes place on the
street, said Martin O'Boyle, chief of the Organized Crime Control Bureau.

Although narcotics cops traditionally work undercover, many of the new cops
will be uniformed, giving the targeted neighborhoods a visible police
presence, O'Boyle said.

He added that the cops will also focus on 100 schools with drugdealing
problems in an effort to assist in the mayor's crackdown on gang violence.

"We are going to gather information on the organizational structure of drug
gangs from top to bottom" and identify gang members, O'Boyle said, adding
that the cops will coordinate their aroundtheclock sweeps with state and
federal lawenforcement agencies.

"We're going to work when the dealers work. This isn't a 9to5 job,"
O'Boyle said. "We'll be out there whenever they are."

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown called the planned antidrug offense
"the most ambitious assault on drug trafficking that has ever been devised"
for his borough.

"Children have to be able to walk to school and people should be able to
shop without being confronted by drug dealers," he said.

O'Boyle said similar initiatives have been "highly successful" in
Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and other areas of The Bronx.

Crime in three precincts included in the Manhattan North initiative
plummeted 17 percent since the beginning of the year nearly double the
city average, he said.

The new cops will be in for the long haul, O'Boyle vowed.

"In the past, the way we worked was we would go into an area, saturate it
and leave in three months," he explained. "In retrospect, that was a
mistake. The crime came back. We've learned we can't leave."

Copyright (c) 1997, N.Y.P. Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.