Two Bronx cops mixed up in the ticket-fixing scandal could force prosecutors to drop their case against a suspected crack dealer, sources said.

The accused 23-year-old dealer was carrying at least six baggies of crack cocaine when Officers Harry Delacruz and Orlando Colon caught him slinging outside 1720 University Ave. in Morris Heights in January of last year, court records show.

The testimony of both officers, along with the drugs they confiscated, would typically be enough to score a conviction. But Delacruz and Colon were investigated as part of a massive probe into ticket fixing, sources said.

The cops drew the attention of Internal Affairs Bureau investigators after their names came up in the wiretapped phone calls of union delegates, sources said.

It’s not clear whether the cops committed any wrongdoing.

The Bronx district attorney’s office, which is expected to prosecute 17 cops as part of the probe, is hesitant to put either officer on the stand, sources said.

“Especially in DWI and narcotics cases, the ticket-fixing issue is killing the DA’s office,” a law enforcement source said.

Prosecutors will decide in January whether to go forward with the drug case, sources said.

kdeutsch@nydailynews.com

Exclusive

Bronx deli worker and father of two Jose Delacruz is not the deported drug dealer “El Toro” – now if he could just get the cops to believe him.

Delacruz, 50, has been arrested four times, interrogated by the FBI and nearly deported – all because he has the same name and birthday as a wanted felon.

The Morris Heights sandwich maker did plead guilty in 1993 to attempted burglary, but he’s not Jose (El Toro) Delacruz, an ex-con who ran with a Soundview-based drug crew in the 1980s, sources said.

He has notified the city that he intends to sue the NYPD for million over the mixups, saying he lives in constant fear of police.

“No matter what I do, they always think I’m him,” Delacruz told the Daily News. “It’s a terrible way to live. I’m scared all the time.”

The soft-spoken dad carries around a certified court document explaining he is not El Toro, who is wanted in a 1999 cocaine possession case.

Still, he keeps getting arrested after routine traffic stops and background checks, roughed up by disbelieving cops and accused of crimes he never committed, he said.

“My daughters think I must be guilty of something because this keeps happening,” Delacruz said. “I just want to clear my name.”

Delacruz recently shaved his mustache in an effort to look less like his felonious counterpart.

The other Jose Delacruz – who did a year-long prison stint on an 1986 drug rap – was recently deported to the Dominican Republic.

His unlucky namesake nearly got booted to the same country in April, when he was locked up in The Tombs for four days before federal agents determined they had the wrong man.

The mixup stunned a Manhattan judge, who wondered how authorities could have blundered so badly.

“You mean the person who’s in front of me is not the person who’s wanted in this indictment?” Judge Charles Solomon asked prosecutors. “It certainly doesn’t look like him, even with the passage of time.”

He was cleared of wrongdoing – but got arrested two months later while visiting Orlando.

Delacruz, who also was mistakenly arrested in 2007 and 2009, has struggled to find a better job due to his tainted moniker.

The Taxi and Limousine Commission refused to license him, believing he was a wanted criminal.

His civil lawyer, Elliot Kay, said there’s no excuse for the arrests.

“It’s obvious the police simply did not care that they were arresting the wrong person,” Kay said.

“They chose to ignore he fact that Mr. Delacruz does not look like the fugitive, his fingerprints do not match the fugitive’s and he had a letter from the court confirming that he’s not the fugitive.”

The NYPD and the FBI did not return a request for comment.

With Melissa Grace

kdeutsch@nydailynews.com

Exclusive

Bronx deli worker and father of two Jose Delacruz is not the deported drug dealer “El Toro” – now if he could just get the cops to believe him.

Delacruz, 50, has been arrested four times, interrogated by the FBI and nearly deported – all because he has the same name and birthday as a wanted felon.

The Morris Heights sandwich maker did plead guilty in 1993 to attempted burglary, but he’s not Jose (El Toro) Delacruz, an ex-con who ran with a Soundview-based drug crew in the 1980s, sources said.

He has notified the city that he intends to sue the NYPD for million over the mixups, saying he lives in constant fear of police.

“No matter what I do, they always think I’m him,” Delacruz told the Daily News. “It’s a terrible way to live. I’m scared all the time.”

The soft-spoken dad carries around a certified court document explaining he is not El Toro, who is wanted in a 1999 cocaine possession case.

Still, he keeps getting arrested after routine traffic stops and background checks, roughed up by disbelieving cops and accused of crimes he never committed, he said.

“My daughters think I must be guilty of something because this keeps happening,” Delacruz said. “I just want to clear my name.”

Delacruz recently shaved his mustache in an effort to look less like his felonious counterpart.

The other Jose Delacruz – who did a year-long prison stint on an 1986 drug rap – was recently deported to the Dominican Republic.

His unlucky namesake nearly got booted to the same country in April, when he was locked up in The Tombs for four days before federal agents determined they had the wrong man.

The mixup stunned a Manhattan judge, who wondered how authorities could have blundered so badly.

“You mean the person who’s in front of me is not the person who’s wanted in this indictment?” Judge Charles Solomon asked prosecutors. “It certainly doesn’t look like him, even with the passage of time.”

He was cleared of wrongdoing – but got arrested two months later while visiting Orlando.

Delacruz, who also was mistakenly arrested in 2007 and 2009, has struggled to find a better job due to his tainted moniker.

The Taxi and Limousine Commission refused to license him, believing he was a wanted criminal.

His civil lawyer, Elliot Kay, said there’s no excuse for the arrests.

“It’s obvious the police simply did not care that they were arresting the wrong person,” Kay said.

“They chose to ignore he fact that Mr. Delacruz does not look like the fugitive, his fingerprints do not match the fugitive’s and he had a letter from the court confirming that he’s not the fugitive.”

The NYPD and the FBI did not return a request for comment.

With Melissa Grace

kdeutsch@nydailynews.com

Six American flags flutter outside 2319 Prospect Ave., and you would be right to conclude this is not just another boarded-up Bronx building with a VACATE – DO NOT ENTER notice on the door.

For this is not just another example of what went wrong, not just another abandoned hulk like the building next door at 2321 Prospect Ave., which was gutted by fire after its owner walked away from a subprime and let drug dealers move in.

The family that owns the building with the flags is determined to return and resume a plan embodying the virtues that made America great and should guide us all in these bleak times.

The family remains undeterred even after being robbed and terrorized by drug dealers, failed by the local police and threatened by a city Buildings Department with a ,000-a -day fine for supposedly running an illegal SRO.

What the family was running was an all-American Dream that began in 2006, when Chancy Marsh used retirement funds from his years as a school principal to buy 2319 Prospect Ave.

The plan was to bring their six grown children under one roof so they could save on rent and expenses while they paid off college loans.

A son became a doctor, a daughter a basketball coach. Another daughter and son followed their father into education. Another daughter graduated with a degree in psychology. The other son is in engineering school.

“We could improve our family generationally,” the matriarch, 58-year-old Gayla Marsh, explained. “They could move out debt-free, have a decent income and be able to do anything.”

Even as their building became a palace of the American spirit, drug dealers took over the first floor of the foreclosed building next door. A fire broke out there on April 25, killing three tenants who had continued to live upstairs.

The Marsh family escaped unhurt, but the building was ordered vacated. The family scattered.

“We’re displaced all over the place,” the father said.

The drug dealers took the vacate order as an opportunity to loot the home on May 9, taking everything from the clothing one son wore to teach school to a gold medal the father won as a national champion in the 800 meters while running track for Power Memorial High School.

“Gone,” the father said.

The thieves also took sneakers a daughter collected while coaching the Monroe College women’s basketball team to an NCAA championship. The thieves brazenly wore them around the neighborhood.

“Walking down the street with her sneakers on their feet,” the father said.

The situation took a scary turn on July 21. The mother and a son stopped by to care for a dog they posted inside to prevent break-ins. The drug dealers suddenly attacked, breaking a window in the son’s car and going after the mother with a hammer.

Cops identified the one with the hammer and produced an address, but he has yet to be arrested. I knocked on his door Monday and there he was, having just wakened at midday. He, of course, knew nothing about anything.

Meanwhile, the family convinced the Buildings Department they were not running an SRO. They may still face a ,600 fine for two partitions built before they bought the place.

But those flags still flutter out front, and the family hopes to move back in by next spring.

“We have to fight the good fight and not let these obstacles get in our way,” said a son, Chancy Marsh Jr.

mdaly@nydailynews.com

Thanks to the takedown of a “high-powered” narcotics ring in the Bronx, Morris Heights kids are spending their summer days playing sports.

The 5,000 in cash seized last year from a 2-pound-a-day cocaine and heroin business run by kingpin Jose Delorbe at 1571 Undercliff Ave. is funding a Police Athletic League Summer Play Street Program at a school a half-block away.

“We’ve put the past behind us,” Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan said yesterday at the ribbon-cutting ceremony outside the Roland Patterson School/Intermediate School 229 on Harlem River Park Bridge.

“Let’s plant the seeds for our great future – for our children, who have so much to give to all of us,” she said.

Brennan was joined by Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson, whose office busted 22 drug dealers who ran an “open drug bazaar” in the courtyard of the River Park Towers Housing Complex, just across the street, in January.

At the school, up to 120 kids – ages 6 to 16 – can play supervised basketball, volleyball, stickball, ping pong and board games, along with dance and cultural events Monday through Thursday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. until Aug. 10.

In an area plagued by drugs and violence, the PAL program – started citywide in 1914 – mandates participants take group classes on bullying, gang awareness and drug and alcohol prevention.

A shootout on Undercliff Ave. in 2009 between Delorbe’s group and a rival drug pack left bullets sprayed on the streets in the early morning hours.

“This Play Street was made possible because of drug dealers,” said Alana Sweeney, PAL’s acting executive director. “And now it is time to repair the harm that it has done to the streets, to the communities – and from where I sit – the most important of all, to our children.”

Vivian Reyes, 11, a fifth-grader at the school, who lives nearby, is excited to have something better to do with her time off than sit in front of the television at home.

“We do fun arts and crafts and play sports,” she said. “It’s a smart way we can stay with our friends and keep out of the dangers of the streets.”

“It’s a little weird where the money is coming from, but at least they’re using it for good instead of it being used where it came from,” said DeWitt Clinton High School freshman Tatiana Cannon, 13.

“Kids out here that join gangs and sell drugs either end up dead or in jail, and it hurts their parents,” she said.

A Bronx narcotics detective was charged with 49 counts of perjury Thursday for repeatedly lying to a grand jury and judge about witnessing a supposed drug sale.

Detective Francisco Payano gave false testimony to a grand jury 13 times and also lied under oath 36 times during two court hearings in January 2010, prosecutors said.

Payano said he saw Omar Tawdeen, 31, sell crack to three people in the lobby of a building on Bronxwood Ave. in January 2009.

But a surveillance video from the lobby proved Tawdeen wasn’t even there, prosecutors said.

The charges against Tawdeen were tossed in February 2010.

“These are very serious charges,” Bronx Assistant District Attorney Donald Levin said at Payano’s arraignment Thursday. “The surveillance video proves the defendant was never even in the area.”

“This (alleged crime) simply just did not happen,” Levin said of Tawdeen’s case.

Payano, who pleaded not guilty, was released on his own recognizance.

The detective had no comment outside court. Payano was escorted out of the building flanked by four cops, one of whom lunged at a Daily News photographer.

“Give him a break or else!” the unidentified cop hollered.

kdeutsch@nydailynews.com

Disgruntled neighbors are counting on a new property owner to clean up a ramshackle Van Nest apartment house that doubles as a drug den.

Last month, three people died when fire engulfed a rundown Belmont slum controlled by drug dealers who obstructed safety inspectors before the blaze.

Some residents on Garfield St. fear that the sagging, three-story building at No. 1663 could pose a similar danger.

They say it is a bustling marijuana market, with tenants pushing dope day and night.

“Everybody knows what goes on there,” said a neighbor frightened to give her name. “People come to get high. They stay and hang out.”

“The drug dealing is blatant,” said Bernadette Ferrara, vice president of the Van Nest Neighborhood Alliance. “It attracts negative people to the community.”

Since last August, police have made 15 arrests at the property for drug possession, trespassing, and assault, and issued a slew of criminal summonses for noise, drinking and blocking foot traffic, said Deputy Inspector Kevin Nicholson of the 49th Precinct.

There was a shooting at the building last October and a drug bust last Wednesday, said Nicholson. Cops found a pound of marijuana.

“The block is a good block, but one bad building can bring down a good neighborhood,” he said, adding that increased enforcement has helped.

Erik Clayton, 34, bought 1663 Garfield St. for 0,000 last February from landlord Anthony Mango of City Island, a retired cop.

Sweeping up at the building last week, Clayton said the quiet, working-class neighborhood of Van Nest deserves better.

“The last landlord was never around,” said Clayton, dressed in dusty jeans and an orange T-shirt. “He didn’t make repairs. I’m trying to clean up his mess.”

“The block is better now,” said Ondina Batista, 35, a neighbor. “Last summer, it was really bad.”

With 137 open housing code violations for broken windows, lead paint and fire hazards, the six-unit building ranks among the worst in the city.

It is part of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s Alternative Enforcement Program, which allows the agency to make emergency repairs. Clayton owes HPD ,000.

“I’m aware of the problems – I inherited them,” he said, blaming Mango for the violations.

Clayton has evicted two rowdy tenants and begun repairs, replacing a damaged structural beam and fixing leaks. The New Jersey resident believes he can save 1663 Garfield St., but wants HPD to cut him some slack.

“I’m only one man,” he said. “My goal is to get rid of the tenants tearing the building apart.”

Police dealt a stunning blow to two warring Bronx gangs, arresting 19 alleged drug dealers suspected in a dozen shootings and other mayhem in Soundview.

The Wednesday takedown was the culmination of Operation Teflon, a year-long probe by the Bronx Narcotics Bureau targeting two gangs on Wheeler Ave., cops told the Daily News.

A total of 30 thugs have been hit with federal charges of conspiracy to distribute narcotics, and also are suspected in a string of robberies, kidnappings, assaults and shootings.

Five of the alleged hoods have fled the state, cops said, vowing to hunt them down along with six other at-large suspects.

“These gangsters are not fit to live,” fumed Fitzroy Watts, 61, shopping under the Westchester Ave. el yesterday. “I hope they get locked away for good.”

The two gangs, based north and south of Westchester Ave. in the 43rd Precinct, once rolled together as The Wheeler Boys.

But cops said the crew splintered in 2008, leading to open warfare on Wheeler, the same street where police mistakenly killed African immigrant Amadou Diallo in 1999.

“These two gangs were like a divorced couple that lived next to each other,” said a police source.

Cops said the rival gangs were pulling down about ,000 a month dealing crack cocaine before Wednesday night’s roundup.

They are suspected in the Jan. 13 double shooting at Wheeler and Westchester Aves.

Javon Carroll, 18, was killed and Darin Billings, 19, was wounded.

The gangs also are suspected in the shooting of an innocent bystander in 2008.

“The neighborhood has always been bad,” said Jennifer Marie, 21. “The drugs are going to be here no matter what, but the less violence the better.”

Fourteen-year-old Nick, who wouldn’t give his last name, said the bust could help turn the area around.

“It should make us all safer,” he said.

But the arrests won’t stop Carmen Rosario, 41, from kissing the neighborhood goodbye.

“I’m moving because I have a 6-year-old, and it’s not safe for her here,” she said.