"It's a deal," I agreed.

It was almost midnight on a Tuesday in December, and Dave and I were sitting amid a pile of law enforcement vehicles in front of a two-story house. The sheriff's office had called for help while delivering an arrest warrant, and - judging by the unrelenting torrent of verbal abuse being directed at the officers - the detainee's sister was not taking it well.

The uproar suddenly died when she spotted a familiar face from the Asbury Park Police Department, and we were soon back on the road in a police car piloted by Sergeant Rocco Santorsola, the shift supervisor backing up our officers that night.

For the past three hours, Sgt. Santorsola had given us a taste of life from a police officer's view. There was the fleeing suspect, caught when a city detective called ahead to a neighboring town. There was the suspected domestic violence case, where officers confronted a locked door and a snarling Rotweiller.

There was the drug arrest on Bangs Avenue, with the suspects commandeering a grandmother's car. There was the quick, up-and-down search of darkened alleys, looking for three men reportedly wielding a pipe.

There was the disturbed man holding court in the street; the intoxicated person roaming the streets without pants (Sgt. Santorsola discreetly steered us around this one); the young man caught driving through a stop sign; the false alarm at a local business; and the ailing pedestrian looking for a ride to the hospital.

And, as we ping-ponged around the city streets over the course of three hours, Sgt. Santorsola somehow managed to monitor the radio, dispense advice, issue orders, scan the road, and fill us in on tidbits ranging from how to defuse an angry suspect to how to avoid getting shot when approaching a car.

When he dropped us off at midnight - after an eight-hour (for him) shift that had opened with a child darting in front of a car and which, as often happens, allowed no time for dinner - my head was spinning and shift officers were still filling out reports on the evening's events.

In our six months in office, the city council has concentrated on some highly intense issues, from a seriously unbalanced budget to our stalled beachfront and West Side redevelopment.

But 2002 will undoubtedly be the year that we also bring public safety and quality of life issues to the forefront. Our first step - information gathering - has already begun.

The week before my drive with Sgt. Santorsola, several of us spent a Sunday afternoon with members of the Southeast Residents Group (SERG), whose concerns ranged from drug dealing and prostitution to a recent series of street muggings.

And, days before, Councilman John Loffredo and I had walked the city's southwest quadrant with West Side Block Watch members who showed us deteriorating properties, insufficient street lights, and suspected drug houses and hang-outs.

I also spent an afternoon with our new acting police head, Captain Thomas McDonald, learning about the complicated laws that govern what a police officer can and cannot do. (For example, despite numerous residents' requests, the courts have determined that anti-loitering ordinances are illegal.)

Asbury Park's entrenched crime and quality-of-life problems will require persistence and long-term commitment to solve, but important first steps are already underway.

Beginning this week, Capt. McDonald kicked off his new "power shift" program that will place twice as many officers on the street during the peak crime hours of 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. And he redrew the boundaries of Asbury Park's four police patrol zones - unchanged for over a century - to better reflect city crime statistics. (These four zones will double to eight sectors during power shift hours, with police cars circulating in every sector.)

For the first time, officers will also be permanently assigned to specific zones at specific hours each day, and they will spend at least 30 minutes of every shift walking their beat. This will allow them to build a relationship with local residents and business owners, and they will be held accountable for problems in their zone. And because criminals know that patrol officers are sometimes in short supply during shift changes, Capt. McDonald has assigned "early officers" to cover the between-shift periods.

To combat a recent spate of muggings, he has also adjusted detective bureau schedules, and Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye has agreed to provide additional assistance.

One major challenge to our hard-squeezed 2002 city budget will be finding the funds to hire new officers (the department estimates that we should increase the 72-person force to at least 82 members), in a year when disappearing Community Oriented Policing (COPs) grants are causing us to assume up to a half million dollars in added costs for the officers we already have.

But increased numbers alone won't solve Asbury Park's crime problems. Last year, our police department made almost 6,000 arrests - that's an average of more than 16 a day - but many criminals quickly return to the streets, with the aid of lenient court systems and plentiful bail bondsmen.

Further, when police visibility increases on the streets, drug dealers tend to move inside, although additional procedures are being put into place to deal with this.

Still, while the complications are many, there is much we can do and much we can learn from other communities. For example, our recently passed "animal house" ordinance was inspired by a similar law in Belmar. And an on-going campaign to publicize the names of customers rounded up in prostitution stings has lowered prostitution rates in town. (Ironically, city drug dealers and prostitutes often thrive because of customers who come from the more "genteel" suburbs that surround - and frequently criticize - us.)

Community cooperation will be vital, of course. Capt. McDonald wants patrol officers to work closely with neighborhood block watch groups in their zones. And Normand Lemonde, president of the Property Owner's Association, is assembling representatives from SERG, the West Side Block Watch, local churches, and a variety of other community organizations to re-establish the Asbury Park Public Safety Committee, a citizen's group that will work with the council and police to pinpoint major community needs and identify possible solutions.

Will every solution we implement be a rousing success? No, but we'll keep on making adjustments. Will every attempt win full community support? No, as anyone who remembers last year's "Chocolate City" debates can predict.

Our goal must be to do the most good for the largest number of Asbury Park residents and business people with the least cost to all of us, and we can succeed only with your input and support. Please keep informed by coming to meetings and reading the newspapers. And please speak up so we'll understand your point of view.

This is one battle that it's going to take an entire community to win. But win it, we will.