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Even after 25 years on the job, the 48-year-old Fuchs claims he has never tired of going out on patrol. “It’s what I do,” the Woodhaven native and Rockaways resident says.

“How much longer? I don’t know. Maybe I’d feel a little different in another command, but if you scratch the usual NSU assignment and another year-and-a-half in another command, I’ve been working the 19th since I got out of the Academy. At this point I can’t imagine some place with more variety and action.”

The command has had more than its share of tabloid front pages over the years. Robert Chambers met his unlucky victim at a bar in the zone. Elderly socialite Irene Silverman was fleeced and then murdered in the area by the mother-son grifter team of Sante and Kenneth Kimes. The thug known as the East Side Rapist was busy in the district for months before disappearing. Less than 24 hours before Fuchs and O’Shea took to the streets, a fugitive from Rhode Island, wanted for murder, was shot down in the middle of the day on Lexington Avenue after wielding a knife against an MTA officer in what was generally viewed as a “suicide by cop.” Given the numerous posh hotels around, responding to calls involving Hollywood or music-world celebrities has also approached if not the routine, at least the less than startling.

Then, of course, there’s the budding theme of terrorism. “I wouldn’t say we’re more alert to it than other commands,” O’Shea observes, “but we’re certainly aware of the kind of special targets you have in the 19th. You want to make a splash, this is the neighborhood to do it in.”

So far, though, the most glaring episode of the kind produced little besides farce. “It was a couple of years ago,” O’Shea recalls, “and there was a call from Starbuck’s that this guy walked in with a device with all these wires hanging out the back, then he got up and just left it on a table. At the time Starbuck’s was feeling a little edgy about protesters wanting to destroy them or something. Anyway, they close down the streets around the store and send in the Bomb Squad. What they find is one of these little machines for blowing up balloons.

"Just then the guy comes back for his gizmo. He says he didn’t realize he’d forgotten it until he was blocks away. He tells us he works in Central Park blowing up the balloons. ‘I’m a clown!’ he keeps yelling. ‘Just a clown!’ Nobody there was ready to argue with him.”

Back in the less eventful present, Fuchs and O’Shea spend a couple of hours chasing down a series of belatedly reported disturbances. First there’s a double-parked Honda on First Avenue that has angered a supermarket anxious to unload a delivery truck, but the car has moved on before the cops arrive. A report of a gang fight in Carl Schurz Park (the dispatcher’s information says “more than 30 teenagers”) turns out to be a case of two boys harassing some classmates, then hightailing it before patrol cars converge on the scene. Somebody else has found it entertaining to stand on a rooftop at Lexington and 80th and toss white pebbles on the pedestrians six floors below.

By the time the cops show up, the only evidence is a handful of pebbles on the sidewalk.

Compared to all these non-happenings, a fender-bender at Second Avenue and 65th Street produces some fireworks. While filling out the endless paperwork, Fuchs and O’Shea try to make peace between the antagonists — man and a woman in one car and a woman in the other — and guide them through the necessary paperwork.

The flip side of the 19th’s incessant metropolitan clamor is the isolation and loneliness of numerous residents, especially the elderly, in the high-rise apartments and rent-controlled walkups. Hardly a day goes by without the command’s Community Affairs officers fielding phone calls from the solitary, the widowed, and the delusional. On the street, it’s having to respond to complaints about would-be thieves, would-be assailants, and an array of invisible men knocking on doors. One of the regulars is a middle-aged woman on the ground floor of an 83rd Street walkup.

Fuchs and O’Shea know her from previous visits and are well versed in the rules of the game as she ushers them quickly into her cramped two-room apartment and clicks the lock twice before reporting the latest invasion of her privacy.

For most of her narrative — former landlords off the premises for nine years, Beatles songs played by a neighbor that drove her crazy, her own appreciation of music while singing in her church choir, and intruders seeking to murder her — she fixes her eyes on the names on the cops’ shields, and uses their names in every sentence. “Since you people are good enough to think of me in a personal way,” she says, “I like addressing you personally, too. Makes it all more human, don’t you think?”

Fuchs couldn’t agree more and in various ways tries to pry out the immediate motive for this particular call. All he gets for his trouble is another monologue about the woman’s handicapped war veteran of a husband and the evil designs of the landlord long gone from the scene. No problem, Fuchs assures her; as long as they keep in touch, they’ll be prepared for any contingency. The woman couldn’t be happier for the attention. To show her gratitude she asks whether the cops would like to hear her singing voice. “I’m a soprano,” she says, “and they always say I’m a highlight at the church services on Sundays.”

Fuchs begs off politely, but still leaves under a hail of thanks. “You really know how to treat people,” the woman calls after him. “I think you must have gone to diplomacy school.”

Well, yes. In a way.

Donald Dewey's latest book, "The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartooning," will be published early in 2007.

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