Officer Steve Simone doesn’t romanticize his work at the 68^th Police Precinct in Brooklyn.  “I’m just a summons guy. I just give out tickets,” he said.

But it wasn’t always this way.

Simone previously worked the 73^rd Precinct, planted in a district where shootings are common. In 1999 Simone transferred to the precinct of his choice, a reward for several bribery arrests. So he chose the 68^th, which he said serves one of the “nicest” areas of Brooklyn. “This is a very slow house,” he said of the 68^th Precinct. “It’s a ‘C’ house. It goes ‘A,’ ‘B,’ or ‘C,’ and ‘A’ houses are the busiest.”

Simone’s career reflects the tremendous divide between precinct classifications. In the ‘A’ houses, officers face a barrage of violent crime, something Simone suggests weakens the spirit of civic duty.

“When you first become a cop you want to save the world, you want to work in a precinct where a lot of shit goes down,” he said. “But after a couple of years of that, you don’t want to do nothing.”

The Bay Ridge area, covered by the 68^th, suffers its share of crime. Most calls involve alleged assaults, missing persons, car accidents and stolen cars and car parts. “You do get jobs,” said Simone, “but nothing like where I used to work.”

Simone transferred from the 73^rd Precinct in East New York, Brooklyn. There, he said, he heard shots every day in the streets, and knew of murders that no one outside of East New York would ever hear about.

Though only separated by 8 1/2 miles, the two precincts are worlds apart in the crimes they face daily, according to official police statistics. The 73rd Precinct already has more murder cases this year – 17 – than in all of 2005. The 68th Precinct is on pace with last year, when one murder was reported. Cases of robbery and felony assault in the 73^rd dwarf the 68^th’s by nearly five times. The only area where the Bay Ridge precinct exceeds its Ocean Hill – Brownsville counterpart is in car theft.

Combating greater crimes requires greater resources. A 73rd Precinct officer who requested anonymity estimated 300 officers work there, but wouldn’t say how many police vehicles are in operation, though he said most precincts have a car shortage.

“An ‘A’ house is a house full of crime,” the officer said. “‘A’ houses generally have more officers because of the type of crime going on.” He cited 18 shootings that took place in East New York this past August.

An officer of the 68^th Precinct who gave only his surname, Barbella, estimated that the station has 115 officers and between 15 and 20 patrol cars, with as many as 10 cars on the road at a time.

Simone – who has worked the 68^th Precinct for seven years – patrols for traffic and parking violations in Bay Ridge and Diker Heights during his eight-hour, weekday shifts. Though he occasionally responds to radio calls for police response to crime scenes, the majority of his time is spent writing tickets and chasing away double-parkers.

Simone appears content with his position and his daily tasks at the 68^th, but admitted he was initially startled by the transition to a C house from an A house.

“When I first got to 68^th, I was driving along the jogging path and people waved. I was surprised,” he said. “I was used to people hating the police.”