Last Saturday afternoon I went to 40th Street and Third Avenue to catch a bus out to Long Island. It was a beautiful day, and the city streets were full of "homeless" men—a population that seems to be re-emerging from wherever they disappeared to during the Giuliani days.

On the block where I awaited my bus there were two such people. One was a tall skinny black man quietly engrossed in a paperback as he leaned against his laundry cart. The other was a heavily tatooed white man, wearing only shorts and boots. He was drunk or stoned or both, and staggering up and down the sidewalk. From time to time he wandered into the street to bang on windows of startled drivers.

After watching him for a while it occurred to me to call the police: The guy was scaring women on the sidewalk and looked like he needed help. Not having an alternative number, I called 911, figuring that in these days of relatively low crime, it wouldn't be seen as too trivial a matter.

Once I got through, I was told by the operator that a car would be sent to check out the situation.

My 7 o'clock bus wasn't due for another 40 minutes so I sat on a bench and waited for the cops to come. Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen . . . Still no sign of the police.

In the meantime, the reeling homeless guy lurched into Third Avenue, where he stopped, prompting cars to swerve around him.

I then called the Midtown South precinct, telling the officer who answered the phone that there was a drunk about to cause an accident in the middle of the road, and that I had called 911 about him earlier, to no avail. The officer gruffly informed me that "we got our priorities," and that anyway, I was calling the wrong precinct: I needed the "One Seven."

He then hung up.

So again I called 911, rereported this "quality of life" problem and was again promised a car would be sent.

But by the time my bus pulled out 20 minutes later, the police still hadn't shown up.

Days later, when I called the NYPD for this story, an official claimed that patrol cars were sent in response a few minutes after each of the 911 calls and that both calls turned out to be "unfounded."

Maybe the cars were sent to the wrong address, but I know what I saw, and what I didn't.

I didn't leave the corner of 40th and Third for 40 minutes. Any police car that came to that corner and escaped my notice would have had to have been extremely small or using some kind of cloaking device.

It's all too easy, when you catch sight of the odd squeegy-man or spot a mini-epidemic of graffiti, to conclude that the Giuliani "civility" ball is being dropped, and that the bad old days will soon be here again.

But there really are more vagrants in the streets, and they sure don't look like recently fired Enron executives.

A key section of the population isn't scared of Giuliani anymore - and I don't mean the vagrants, I mean cops. It was they who transformed our lives for the better.

True, cleaning up after mentally ill, drug addicted street bums is an extremely disagreeable business (I wouldn't want to have one of these guys throwing up in the back of my car). And it's no secret that pressure must be maintained from the top to ensure that cops perform tedious and unpleasant tasks like this.

But the fact remains that "Broken Windows" policing&#!51;going after petty crimes—works. It made a huge difference in the quality of life here and remains an essential if unglamorous part of the fight against "serious" crime. Every time citizens are threatened by aggressive "homeless" men, it has a corrosive effect on the social fabric.

Enforcing civility standards in the street was never about pleasing the aesthetic sensibilities of a few prissy rich people, still less about the "oppression" of minorities, but about making the city safer as well as more agreeable for all.

I hope the apparent lack of response to my 911 calls was an anomaly. Because if not, things will soon be getting unpleasant—and then dangerous.