Pubdate: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://forums.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Elissa Gootman POLICE CALL DRUG GANG HARD TO ROOT OUT In an era of stabilized crack markets and increasingly intricate drug investigations, the Black-Top gang kept pace with the times to make close to $2 million a year, city prosecutors said yesterday. The gang moved from the streets to indoors, reigning over two brick apartment buildings in Harlem and scanning customers with electronic detectors to screen for recording devices, officials said. But on Thursday, law enforcement officials said they had finally rooted out the gang, which they said had operated for at least a decade. Prosecutors described a painstaking effort to amass enough evidence for conspiracy charges. The indictment of 14 leading members of the gang on drug conspiracy charges was announced Thursday, and 12 were arrested in a raid that began at 6:30 a.m. that day, officials said. Several suspects were picked up in prison. The police said yesterday that they were still searching for two men, whom officials identified as Angel Celpa and Steven Colbert. The police arrested 13 other people during the raid and seized 4,100 vials of crack, 4 guns, a high-tech security system, a money-counting machine, remote transmitters and $5,900 in cash, the police said. They also recovered a computer, and officials were planning to search the hard drive for further evidence. "It was a tremendously difficult operation to bust," said Bridget G. Brennan, the city's special narcotics prosecutor. "They used all kinds of countersurveillance techniques." When the Police Department stepped up its efforts against street- corner drug deals, the Black-Top gang transferred its business into the two Harlem buildings, 12-14 and 16-18 Old Broadway, officials said. The gang worked out of vacant apartments and sometimes took over the apartments of residents who were not involved in the sales, the authorities said. In one case last November, the authorities said, a woman returned home after a weekend away to find that her apartment had been broken into, and her baby's diaper bag had been loaded with walkie-talkies. Shortly afterward, the authorities said, the woman went away for several days, and returned to find that the locks on her apartment had been changed and drugs were being sold out of her home. At a news conference yesterday, Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik said the gang used the kind of tactics that make the job of an undercover detective, a job he formerly held, dangerous. "The people that work these types of operations have to go into these apartments most of the time without a firearm," he said. "Once they're in there, they're really in the hands of the people behind those doors." Some residents of the buildings were relieved to hear of the arrests. Manuel Guaman, 44, who has lived at 16-18 Old Broadway for 10 years, said, "They were making too much noise the whole night, just yelling." Sometimes, Mr. Guaman said, when he left his apartment to go to work at midnight, "I couldn't walk in the hall because it was really crowded." But another resident, Mercedes Rosario, 37, said through a translator that she had not encountered gang activity in the four years that she had lived at 12-14 Old Broadway. "There was no gang here, and there was no problem," she said. Officials said the Black-Top gang was able to maintain its Old Broadway stronghold despite what they called "consistent enforcement efforts." Since 1999, the police arrested more than 200 people connected to the buildings, both buyers and sellers, on narcotics-related charges, they said. But until now, the authorities said, the suspects had managed to avoid a conspiracy charge. Guards for the gang posted outside the buildings used remote transmitters to signal beeper-equipped dealers when the police were nearby, creating an early-warning system that kept law enforcement officials at bay, prosecutors said. Gang members blackened stairwells and dead-bolted exits. When police officers entered the building, dealers would send their customers charging downstairs to run interference, delaying the officers long enough to fold up operations, officials said. Members threatened undercover officers, turned away unfamiliar customers and scrupulously limited sales to keep potential penalties low, the authorities said. Prosecutors said the case broke when one of the suspects, Carlos Hernandez, had a motorcycle accident while delivering a shipment of crack vials to one of the buildings. Officials said Mr. Hernandez was wearing a bulletproof vest and a backpack stocked with 4,500 crack vials when he was found unconscious on the street, a block from his destination. The police identified the gang leaders as Jose Celpa, 22, and Vladimir Silfa, 29, who was arrested in state prison. Mr. Celpa was charged with three counts of conspiracy and three counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance. Mr. Silfa was charged with two counts of conspiracy. Eric W. Siegle, a lawyer representing one of the defendants, Rafael Rosario, 22, said Mr. Rosario would plead not guilty at his arraignment, which a spokeswoman for Ms. Brennan said was scheduled for Monday. The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which took over the two buildings in 1995 when the previous owner failed to pay taxes, is scheduled to turn over the buildings to a nonprofit organization. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake