The stretch of Valentine Avenue, between East 194th and 196th streets, has proven ideal for a thriving illegal drug trade. It’s a one-way, southbound. It’s not intersected on 195th Street. And there’s a slight bend in the canyon-like corridor of six-story apartment buildings, making it easy for lookouts to spot oncoming police cars.

For five years, up until a huge bust this past summer, police say the La Perla Organization — a hierarchical network of drug dealers, many of them associated with the Latin Kings gang — turned this stretch into a lucrative heroin business that generated $25,000 to $40,000 a day in street-level sales. Longtime residents say drug dealing had been a problem for decades, but never was it this organized or dominant.

Today, more than two months after police arrested 31 suspects, seized $1.5 million in cash and four kilograms of heroin, the block is essentially drug free, residents say.

They hope it stays that way.

A Neighborhood Gone Bad

Go back 40 years on Valentine Avenue, Carol Sisti says, and you would see a “beautiful” block comprised of hardworking families, mostly Irish and Albanian.

The neighborhood’s ethnic makeup has changed, but it’s still made up of working-class families, says John Reilly, the executive director of Fordham Bedford Housing, which manages five buildings on the block. But the years have not been kind to Valentine or many of the surrounding blocks, which have been plagued by drug dealing and violence for three decades.

Now one of the longest tenured residents on Valentine, Sisti says she’s struggling to raise her two young grandchildren on the block. “I don’t let them out,” she says.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the block’s buildings began falling into disrepair and several were all but abandoned. Many residents left and new immigrants moved in. This coincided with a citywide drug trafficking epidemic that Valentine, as well as surrounding blocks, fell victim to.

During the early 1980s, many young community organizers moved into buildings on Valentine, injecting positive energy and activism into the block. Much of the housing was rehabbed. But most of those activists moved on and started families elsewhere. 

Years, and several policing initiatives later — some successful, but only temporarily — the area of the 52nd Precinct known as Sector G (or George) remains a hotspot for drug activity and its partner in crime, violence. Valentine was the area’s poster child.

In 1993, The New York Times Magazine ran a 10,000-word cover story about the city’s short-lived attempt at a community policing initiative centered on one beat cop in Sector G. In it, the reporter calls the drug dealers “organized” and “ruthless” and describes the bloody scene after one of them was shot to death on Valentine. 

Hitting Rock Bottom

In June, federal drug czar Gil Kerlikowske took a tour around Sector G with Monsignor John Jenik of Our Lady of Refuge, a Catholic church on 196th Street. In 1985, he put up several wooden crosses emblazoned with the words, “Drugs Crucify.” He used to hold mass on the streets at popular drug spots, but hasn’t done so for several years as the problems continued unabated.

Patrick Wynne, a Fordham University graduate, moved into the neighborhood 15 years ago. He now lives in the same apartment his wife moved into with her family 25 years ago. Together with their two young children, they call Valentine Avenue home.

Despite its imperfections, Wynne said his family didn’t really consider leaving the area until 2005, about the same time the Bronx District Attorney’s office says La Perla began its takeover operation. “We’ve got to get out of here,” Wynne and his wife began saying.  

The block became an open market for drug trafficking, with groups of dealers clustered in front of every other building and junkies travelling from near (around the block) and far (Connecticut, New Jersey) to cop brand names like “LaPerla,” “Salsa,” and “Sabroso,” according to residents and the Bronx District Attorney’s office. 

While violence was rare, the dealers operated with impunity and little regard for the families and kids who navigated the dealers on a daily basis — on their way to work, to school or just to pick up milk at the local bodega.

“It was chaos, man,” says Luis Pena, who has lived on the block for 10 years. “It was ridiculous, twenty-four-seven.”

“They were selling heroin right in front of kids,” Sisti says.
While he never felt threatened, Pena called the experience “annoying.” Eileen Mahoney, a 30-year resident of Valentine, said neighbors began calling the block “drug alley.”

“I’d see [the dealers] in front of the door and say, ‘No disrespect, but can you move,’” Wynne says he would often tell them. “And they would, but then the next day they’d be back or one building over.”

The Big Bust

Despite the relentless crusading of a handful of vocal community members, including Jenik, and promises by past commanding officers of the 52nd Precinct to increase patrols in the area, the drug problems persisted.

In late 2009, however, the NYPD major case squad and the Bronx District Attorney’s office began a joint investigation into La Perla, which prosecutors say also sold heroin at two other locations besides Valentine — 157th Street and Gerard Avenue, near Yankee Stadium, and 180th Street and Mohegan Avenue, just south of Crotona Park.

Reports from the sprawling investigation read like something out of “The Wire.” They tapped 28 phone lines, conducted video surveillance and made numerous heroin “buys” using undercover detectives. On top of the $1.5 million in cash and 31 arrests, police also recovered four guns, confiscated 12 vehicles and a bunch of bling, including diamond earrings, a Cuban link chain and Breitling watches.

After the arrests, “the next day, we knew it,” Mahoney says.

“We were wondering where everybody went,” says Wynne, who in many ways, feels for those arrested and their families.  “They were very competent, very organized,” he says.” Wynne wonders why they couldn’t have channeled those skills into something more productive. The bigger problem, he says, is that with few area community centers and after-school programs, these dealers “had no alternatives, no resources” to do something else.

Drug dealing remains prevalent in the surrounding area. Reilly says the dealing has increased on 198th Street, near Valentine. Problems remain on 194th Street, around Decatur and Marion avenues, where there was a triple shooting earlier this year.

“What they did [on Valentine] was effective,” Reilly says. “But it didn’t really have an impact elsewhere.”

John D’Adamo, the commander of the 52nd Precinct, said the area around 194th Street is now part of an Impact Zone, which means the area is foot-patrolled by rookie cops. He said the precinct was “doing maintenance work” in the area to avoid a La Perla repeat. 

Last week on Valentine, kids happily skipped by with their parents. It was quiet, aside from a distant salsa beat playing from a building window. People stopped and chatted.

“Feels like a different area,” Pena says.

Despite the possibility that a competitor might come and take advantage of Valentine’s unique, drug-trade-friendly features, residents said they think it won’t ever be as bad as before.

And for now, Wynne says, “That tension,” he pauses, a breeze passes by, “is just gone.”