In Kensington, residents united in fear

BELOW THE ROARING El train, past Kensington's trash-speckled lots and abandoned homes, amid a sea of drug dealers, users and prostitutes, a quickly forgotten mass of people say they feel trapped in their own homes.

More than a week after an arrest in the infamous Kensington Strangler case, the Guardian Angels have left, and residents say they see fewer cops patrolling than during the days of the heated manhunt.

Some said they yearn for the return of policing strategies like Operation Sunrise, a multiagency - although temporary - effort in 1998 aimed at ridding the neighborhood of drugs, crime and blight. The sound back then of police helicopters thrumming overhead and the sight of fresh boards on windows of long-abandoned buildings provided a glimmer of hope to many of Kensington's law-abiding residents, who hoped that one day, maybe, they would get their neighborhood back.

But the problems that existed decades before Sunrise - and in the decade since - enabled the Strangler to find easy victims. And now that a suspect has been caught and the spotlight is gone, many residents are unsure how the area will ever change.

Lisa Perez said she took matters into her own hands after she called police numerous times about the prostitutes who turn tricks outside her home on Indiana Avenue near Kensington.

"I'm constantly fighting out here with prostitutes," said Perez, 24, a mother of two. "The prostitutes are constantly out here with all of these guys in front of my house."

Perez said that after she and her husband, Less, 32, moved to Kensington six years ago, she broke a prostitute's nose when she caught her trying to engage in sexual acts in front of her two-story home. Perez, a petite woman who has also offered jackets to shivering hookers, flashed a blade that she keeps attached to her waist for protection. A prostitute once threatened to stab Perez with an HIV-tainted needle when she shooed her away from her stoop, she said.

"I feel like I'm trapped in my own house," Perez said. "I don't take my kids out."

She used to call police, but she said they take hours to arrive.

"It's nerve-racking," Less said, adding that he always walks his wife to and from their car.