The rampant, blatant drug sales in North Fordham were due for another close-up.

Every year or two, tabloid columnists and network news cameras touch down to cover the latest outrageous example of the unrelenting drug trade in the area. This time it was drug sales inside Our Lady of Refuge Church that set off the frenzy, with clever headlines like "High Mass" emblazoned across the cover of the Daily News.

This over-the-top incident corresponded with a string of robberies of Mexican immigrants on 196th Street. The men, usually restaurant workers with a day’s pay in cash on them, are attacked as they exit the Kingsbridge Road D station late at night.

But if crime is news, then there is news in North Fordham – or Sector George as police call it – every day and every night, even if network news cameras aren’t there to record it.

In their place, 24-hour surveillance cameras in many area apartment buildings continuously document the criminal activity in real time.

Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, a nonprofit landlord that owns dozens of northwest Bronx apartment buildings, allowed the Norwood News to view a live feed of the lobby activity of one of its buildings above East 194th Street and below 196th Street. The Norwood News requested access to the particular building, but was asked not to print its address for fear it might jeopardize the safety of building tenants and staff.

Viewed last Thursday evening around 10 p.m., the cameras show a man rolling and smoking what appeared to be a marijuana cigarette in the lobby and another man flipping through a wad of cash, apparently counting the evening’s drug sales receipts. A quick rewind to a week earlier reveals the same lobby as party central, with a large group of people smoking, drinking and milling around.

Fordham Bedford staffers say the dealers and users operate unfettered in and around this building and many others. The existence of the free-flowing drug trade goes back to the 1980s, when Monsignor John Jenik, pastor of Our Lady of Refuge Church, posted crucifixes on local telephone polls with the message, "Drugs Crucify," in English and Spanish.

There are occasional disruptions to the brazen outdoor and indoor drug trade. The police have introduced several special initiatives over the last two decades, with cops flooding Sector George, most recently through Operation Impact which deploys a large contingent of rookie officers for a few months at a time.

While residents welcome any respite from the drug trade, everyone interviewed for articles in this paper and others over the years gives virtually the identical assessment of these shows of force. "They flood the streets with a uniformed presence, and then they disappear and go other places," said Yvel Calderon, a former member of the Precinct Community Council, in 2004. "[Drug dealers] aren’t stupid. They are aware that the cops are not there permanently."

Floodlights illuminate the sidewalk like sunlight at the well-maintained building where the Norwood News witnessed the apparent drug activity. It hardly fits the stereotype of a building besieged by drug dealers.

Without success, residents have long called for a sustained and significant police presence in the area.

Meanwhile, at the building the Norwood News visited. Fordham Bedford Housing’s executive director, John Reilly, says he’s going to do the one thing that has had some success in keeping drug dealers out of his lobbies – turn off the heat.