Life in the Towers: 'I'm Tired Of Ducking Bullets'

It made her suspicious that police were being instructed to search apartments for illegal materials, Letitia said.

Since then, Letitia has been knocking on doors around the building and talking to her neighbors, asking people if their apartments had been entered illegally and if they had been treated poorly by the police. Many have complained that police regularly harass the young African-American men in the building with stop-and-frisks and what many in the building feel are unlawful searches.

Tyquan Williams, a 27-year-old father of four, lives in his mother's apartment, a few floors down from Letitia and Tony. He said that early last December, when he turned away from his mother's apartment after locking it and started down the hallway, he was intercepted by a group of police officers. He said the police ordered him to put his hands against the wall, frisked him, reached inside his pockets and pulled out his keys and $400 in cash he planned to use to buy his kids Christmas presents.

The officers said he was under arrest for trespassing and dealing marijuana, Tyquan said. As he was escorted down the hallway, he said, one officer opened his mother's apartment.

"I told him, 'You can't go into my apartment," Tyquan said.

The officer cursed at him and called him a drug dealer, he said. Tyquan spent the night in jail and was charged with possession of marijuana after the officers found two joints in the apartment.

When Tyquan went to court that December, he said, the charge of possession of marijuana was dropped. He said he told the judge he never received the $400 back, but the judge said if Tyquan could not provide a receipt for its origin, he would not be refunded.

"I'm really tired of this," Tyquan said this May. "I can't deal with this. I can't even have my kids over because I don't want my kids to go through this stuff."

The NYPD declined to comment.

The afternoon dwindled down to early evening. The white paint on the sidewalk was hosed off. The sun glittered off Harlem River's water. The boys, after eating free pizza and kicking around a basketball for a while, began to argue with Letitia about whether they could go back to the jungle gym next to the river. Letitia told them they had to wait with her until Tony came back from running an errand. "Please," they begged her. "Please!"

Then a group of young men, sitting on the concrete benches nearby, lit up a blunt. The marijuana smoke drifted past the boys.

Letitia looked at the men and frowned. The man holding the blunt moved it to the other hand and fanned the air in front of him. "Sorry ma'am," he said.

"OK," she said. "Go play."

"Really?" Ra Ra exclaimed.

"Yes," Letitia said. "Go."