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By Root 639 0

to eradicate drug dealing and prostitution from the area, and above all from the tawdry blocks of Eighth Avenue immediately above and below 42nd Street, though the substitution of “good uses” for bad on Eighth Avenue—hotels, restaurants, the new headquarters of The New York Times—is likely to reduce crime there, as it has on 42nd Street. Yet even this rampant activity has been contained, for Eighth Avenue is not in the least ominous even quite late at night, and visitors are even less likely to notice drug deals than they are the homeless. And on 42nd Street, where at least a dozen police officers are posted many nights, you are unlikely to notice either. There may be trouble inside the Broadway City arcade, but it rarely spills out into the street.

Certainly the instruments of control are, if not powerful, then at least numerous. The area is patrolled not only by the New York Police Department but by security officers from the Times Square BID. The BID, a private body made up of local property-holders that performs what are normally thought of as public functions, both cleans up and patrols (and offers services for the homeless) in an area stretching from 40th to 53rd Street, and east of Broadway to west of Eighth Avenue. At any one time, the BID fields as many as thirty-two officers on both fixed and walking posts throughout the area. They wear uniforms, with big-brimmed Smokey the Bear hats. (One officer said that she had been offered $500 for her hat.) But they do not carry weapons and they are not empowered to make arrests; their job is to serve as “the eyes and ears” of the police, and mostly to be a comforting and friendly sight to tourists, who constantly stop them to ask directions, or just to pose for a picture.

One Friday evening in the early summer, I took a tour of Times Square with Eric Rivera, a veteran security officer with the BID and a genuine connoisseur of street crime. Rivera was a fireplug, self-confident and voluble and fond of action: he had enlisted in the Marines as a kid, and though he alluded vaguely to some youthful misconduct, he would be joining the police department the following week. At about ten-thirty that night, Rivera brought me to the Burger King at the southwest corner of 40th Street and Eighth Avenue. We stood across the street, our backs to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and Rivera said, “This is one place I would never tell anyone I know to go to. You got more gun-related incidents here than anywhere. Look at all those people hanging out in front; they’re selling guns, drugs, girls, you name it. It all comes in through the Lincoln Tunnel.” A knot of men stood on the sidewalk, dark silhouettes against the lighted storefront. A police van was parked in front of the restaurant, and an officer was moving from one loiterer to another. “She’s telling them they’ve got five minutes before they have to move along,” Rivera explained. “But they’ll be back.”

As we walked north along Eighth Avenue, Rivera, gesturing around the bus terminal, said, “You got the low-level prostitutes here, the fiftydollar hookers; they’ll turn tricks for a rock of cocaine if they’re hard up. Then you go all the way up to the four-hundred-dollar hookers who hang out at the bar of the Sheraton on Fifty-third.” Without turning around, Rivera said, “The guy in the black-and-white shirt behind us, he’s selling crack. This guy right in front of us here is a pimp. From Fortieth to Forty-eighth, we call it the coke and hooker stroll. They’ll just go up and down all night, looking for action.” The stroll was on the west side of the avenue, which was still chock-a-block with sex shops and strip clubs. We crossed over to the east side between 43rd and 44th and stood among the parked cars, looking back across the street. Rivera picked out his marks like an expert duck hunter peering from the blinds. “See that guy in the red jersey? Certifiable pimp; they call him Little Joe. And there’s Soap-man.” This was Rivera’s own nickname for a dealer who sold crack that turned out to be soap flakes, leaving the unwary buyer sending