ny cop who hits the street with his firearm and handcuffs but without some understanding of diplomacy is going out on the job unarmed. As true as this might be for anyone wearing NYPD blue, it is especially so in the 19th Pct., a hive of activity not only for being in the center of Manhattan but also for hosting scores of foreign legations and ambassadorial residences. And that’s before considering all the American cultural, religious and municipal institutions in the neighborhood where responding to any kind of call involves an Upper East-Side demeanor and discretion not usually associated with New York City police officers.

The command is responsible for patrolling some 217,000 people within a 1.75-square-mile area extending from Fifth Avenue to the East River, from 59th Street up to 96th Street. The neighborhood includes 32 foreign missions, 12 consulates and 70 diplomatic residences. Among its most prominent landmarks are Gracie Mansion, the Roosevelt Island tram, the Seventh Regiment Armory, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick, the Guggenheim and Temple Emanu’el.

Other houses of worship? Some 50 Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox churches and Jewish synagogues. Did somebody say schools? How about 42 elementary schools, three junior highs, three high schools and Hunter College? Hotels? If there’s a chocolate on the pillow, it’s probably a Godiva. As P.O. Kenny Fuchs puts it, “Nobody’s ever going to confuse this command with a stationhouse in Brooklyn or Queens.”

But there’s a lot more to the 19th Pct. than United Nations representatives and Fodor Guide highlights. The diplomatic presence means regular appearances by political demonstrators. Fifth Avenue wouldn’t be Fifth Avenue without parades, and what’s a New York street without a New York street fair? Such a dense population also means more banks per block than can probably be found anywhere outside Zurich, enough bars and restaurants to make the neighborhood a continuous convention of bartenders and waiters, and the kind of mania for high-rise construction that makes you accept scaffolding and cardboard-roofed sidewalks as organic elements of the urban landscape. Can anyone say congestion?

It’s no surprise that such a conspicuous credit-card environment should make burglary and identity theft the command’s chief headaches. Another problem has been a relatively high incidence of bank robberies — sometimes of the quiet-note-to-the-teller variety, other times of the Jesse James kind, and still other times involving only an individual ATM-user. If 1930s bandit Willie Sutton were still around, he might be tempted to elaborate on his famous crack about being a bank robber (“because that’s where the money is”) by pointing specifically to the East Side of Manhattan.

On a recent day patrol, Fuchs and his partner Derek O’Shea are crawling cross-town in their cruiser through the single block from Lexington to Park. Fuchs laughs: “If you’re not ready to go bumper-to-bumper, this isn’t the command for you. You’re better off asking for a transfer or putting in your papers before you go crazy.”