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“It’s day and night and I didn’t even see the worst of it,” says P.O. Ken Moreno, starting off on a midnight-to-eight tour recently. “I got here straight from the Academy in 1991, and every time something heavy went down, the old-timers would tell me it was nothing compared to how it had been a couple of years before. So many of them said it so many times I realized after awhile they weren’t just doing the usual talking.”

Although a native of Brooklyn, Moreno admits he was “shocked” by some of the people he came across roaming the Ninth’s streets. “When did anybody from Red Hook ever think of himself as having lived a sheltered life? But between the transvestites and the squatters, hair colors you didn’t see in a cartoon, it was a real fast education.”

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Moreno is partnered for the night with P.O. Tyra Narvaez, who also landed directly at the Ninth after graduating from the Academy in 1994. Another city kid, from the Bronx, she points out how four sector cars for the midnight-to-eight is almost a luxury of riches. “We’ve done shifts with only two sectors, and one night at least I know about there was only one.”

The Ninth covers slightly less than a square mile from the East River to Broadway and from 14th Street down to East Houston. Its heavily commercial area includes several off-Broadway theaters, numerous art galleries, and 11 schools from elementary level to college. The principal crime problem is burglaries. As Narvaez explains it: “You get a lot of out-of-towners down here. They go to NYU or Columbia or some other school, get jobs on Wall Street, and decide New York’s where they want to live. But even if they’re here for a few years, they can be slow about learning all the ins and outs. Screens in the windows, for example — we see that along Tenth Street or Avenue B and we know the people living there aren’t from Flatbush. Burglars know it, too. And you get the cars parked with out-of-state plates. It all makes for a lot ripping off during work hours. The victims don’t get home until after work, so you end up with the four-to-midnights doing a lot of report-writing and shaking of heads.”

Passing Webster Hall reminds Moreno of how differently the new residents view cops. “Back in the 1990s, they couldn’t get away from us fast enough. They’re holding or something, and you could barely get people to look you in the face. Now we get people actually calling us to report how they’ve been thrown out of clubs like Webster Hall and want us to help them get back in. I say to one of them, ‘Why’d they throw you out?’ He says, ‘Oh, I threw a glass at a bartender.’ I mean, they had every right to throw the guy out. They should’ve been the ones to call us! But this guy, he doesn’t see that. All he’s thinking about is getting back inside.”

On another occasion, according to Moreno, he answered a call from a student who had been robbed of cocaine.

“The guy won’t say exactly what it is he’s lost, keeps talking around it, like it might be money, it might be whatever I want to make out of it. But all the time he’s pointing to this other character saying he was probably the thief. Well, I knew the second guy. He’s one of the biggest dealers in the neighborhood. And he’s not somebody going around taking nickel bags away from students. Let’s say it was one case where the dealer’s rep was a help to him instead of an obstacle.

"What it was, the student was trying to get back at the dealer for not selling to him. He figured we’d find something on the dealer. We probably would have, too, if we’d had a reason to go after him.”

The first stop of the night is to check in with a bouncer at a gay bar on Avenue B. The bouncer has been living a little on the edge for some days after throwing a dealer out of the saloon amid threats he would regret it. Moreno and Narvaez wouldn’t mind if the guy would take off a couple of days until tempers cool, but he is having none of it. “He was all mouth, that’s all it was,” he says, not sounding quite as convinced as he would like. “I got to eat, too, right? Can’t go into hiding.”

“We’re not saying that...”

“I’ll be okay, I’ll be okay. Thanks for dropping by.”

Moreno and Narvaez have little choice but to go off to answer an accident call, but they also know bravado when they hear it. “Ninety-nine out of a hundred, it’s over, he’ll never see the dealer again,” Narvaez says. “But you also always know there’s that one percent and you try to tell yourself not even that possibility exists.”

Like maybe she’s had to tell herself on the job once or twice?

“Not really. I’ve been pretty lucky so far. Never had to use my weapon, never been fired at. I guess the worst moment I’ve had on the job was having to tell this mother and father their daughter had been run over by a garbage truck. It was bad. The driver just didn’t see the woman crossing behind him, backed up, and that was it.”