Come Up Empty-Handed : Drug Agents Blockade N.Y. Harbor

A crackdown on crack prompted the first blockade of New York Harbor since the War of 1812, but federal agents who halted scores of vessels recovered no illegal drugs and made just one unrelated arrest, a spokesman said today.

“I can tell you, anyone trying to bring drugs into New York will be arrested,” said Coast Guard Capt. Arthur Henn, who headed Operation Glass Eye. “We’re out to catch those people bringing drugs into the port and poisoning our children.”

But the blockade produced just one suspect from the first 78 ships boarded. Thomas Hall, 27, of Asbury Park, N.J., was arrested when a computer check turned up an outstanding warrant for armed robbery. Despite 45-minute stem-to-stern searches of pleasure boats and commercial vessels, no drugs were found.

In two years, the Coast Guard has made only five drug-related arrests in New York Harbor, said spokesman Loren Bullard.

Mayor Edward I. Koch blamed publicity for the lack of results.

The search “wasn’t a very well-kept secret on the part of the Coast Guard, because everybody I met Thursday told me about it,” Koch said. “That’s no way to run an operation. That’s got to be done very quietly.”

Random Searches in Future

Bullard said the blockade was merely the start of intensified efforts to stop drugs from coming into the harbor. He said random searches and blockades will occur in the future.

“The primary focus of this operation is to let people know that we’re going to be out there looking for them and they won’t know where or when,” he said. “We may not get you tomorrow, but we’re going to get you.”

Fifteen Coast Guard boats and cutters, joined by four city police boats and two from U.S. Customs, stopped each boat as it entered the harbor through the Verrazano Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn. Searches were conducted at Coast Guard piers on Staten Island.

The operation started about 8:45 p.m. Thursday, and was to continue until sundown today.

Hall was arrested aboard the fishing vessel Savage, which ignored signals to steer to the pier. The 75-foot boat ran aground as a Coast Guard cutter headed toward it and had to be brought in by a tugboat, said Petty Officer Richard Schnurr, a Coast Guard spokesman.

The harbor blockade, the first since the British blocked off the waters in 1815, was the latest effort in the city’s battle against drugs, particularly crack, the highly potent, inexpensive cocaine derivative.