But other people see the structure as a wastebasket. With an abandoned six-family home next door used as a drug house, he finds the addicts' leftovers in his partially built home.

"I continuously find used needles," he told police Thursday. "They keep dumping stuff."

He tried to seal up the structure, which he hopes to move into by November, but people keep getting into it, he said. He's concerned for the effect on his 5- and 10-year-old children.

But Morales didn't just tell a police officer his problem — he told Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood and 30 of his staff, including sergeants, lieutenants, captains and deputy chiefs.

The department's supervisors were gathered Thursday night in City Hall for the department's first "Town Meeting."

More than 70 people, many of them city residents, and the department's recruit class, attended.

"This is your night," Norwood told the audience.

Some people there pointed out problems but most praised the department, during a question-and-answer session. "Everything's just getting out of control. We need to try to get more patrols in the [East Side]," said Paul Barnum, president of the East Side Neighborhood Revitalization Zone, a grassroots group of residents trying to beautify their neighborhood.

"I'm hearing more and more gunfire," he added.

Norwood promised to try to get extra patrols and told the audience to support the department's funding requests at budget hearings to train and hire more officers.

But one particular group of officers is helping, said Frank Martinez, of Monroe, a landlord of 13 properties on Arctic, Maple and Caroline streets, for several decades.

He said the Neighborhood Enforcement Team, a group of eight officers led by Sgt. Paul Grech, is cleaning up the East Side.

"It's never been as good as it is now. I used to have drug dealing, shooting, every night," he said. "Paul and his men are doing great. Your men are working night and day."

He added he always cooperates with police.

Marilyn Perez, of the East Side, said officers should get to know the people on their beats, as Officer Brian Pisanelli has done. "He made himself friendly to everyone on the block" so that residents opened up to him, she said. "It makes a big difference."

But one resident, who lost items to a burglary, wasn't satisfied.

"Never have they recovered the stuff," said Virginia Recktenwald, of the Washington Heights senior housing complex on Washington Avenue.

She added that she sees police officers run traffic lights or failing to stop people who do.

Willie Lopez, a former police officer who will hire security officers for the proposed Steel Point residential buildings, said he was impressed.

"The chief is to be commended," he said.

Meanwhile, at a 5 p.m. rally on Stratford Avenue, before the meeting, community activist Lyle Hassan Jones urged minority youth to cooperate with police.

He said as many as 30 people may have been involved an Oct. 8 street fight in which four people were shot, one fatally, on Carroll Avenue. He urged anyone with information to cooperate with police.