That ended on the day his 14-year-old nephew and a friend were hauled out of a neighborhood barbershop last year as suspected drug dealers.

After ordering the teenagers to put their hands in the air and spread their legs, the police found no drugs. They left without an apology.

"There was a time when there was a relationship between the police and the people," said Brooks, who is African American. "Now, I don't think the cops respect the community."

As Philadelphia debates a tougher style of neighborhood policing, public officials and community leaders need look no farther than some of the city's older suburbs to see what happens when police make thousands of nuisance arrests to fight drugs and violence.

Pottstown, Coatesville and Darby, blue-collar towns where jobs have fled and crime has risen, have in recent years consistently recorded some of the highest arrest rates in America for minor offenses, an Inquirer investigation shows.

Norristown, Bristol Township and Colwyn also rely on these high-arrest strategies. Last year alone they dramatically increased arrests for disorderly conduct and other minor crimes.

Year after year, these municipalities and others across the state aggressively enforce noise, nuisance, loitering, disorderly conduct and jaywalking statutes, focusing mainly on high-crime neighborhoods that are home to large numbers of minorities.

Many police chiefs across the suburbs say nuisance laws are an indispensable tool in their quest to rid the streets of serious criminals; they say many of those arrested have long records for drug dealing or violence. They insist that they do not target offenders by race.

But these aggressive tactics, employed in largely minority neighborhoods, mean that African Americans are arrested for nuisance offenses far more frequently than whites - at rates dramatically out of proportion to their numbers in the population.

Marine Sgt. Kareem Cox, a veteran of two tours in Iraq, said he was standing beside his sister's car in Darby in July when an officer yelled at him to move. When he answered, "You don't have to yell," she put him in handcuffs and charged him with disorderly conduct, an offense later dismissed.

"This will follow me for life," he said.

Inquirer analysis

Among the findings:

Many of the laws used to make these arrests are so vague and poorly drafted that experts say they violate the Constitution. More than 4,000 people in Pennsylvania have been arrested since 2000 under local loitering statutes, including some that outlaw standing in public or "hanging out."

Despite a national trend toward more diverse police forces, the suburban departments embracing these high-arrest tactics are nearly all white and, in some cases, getting whiter - a gulf that increases tensions and creates mistrust between police and communities.

Some police departments and Pennsylvania county jails routinely strip-search all defendants, including those arrested on minor nuisance laws - though federal courts have consistently ruled that such blanket strip-search policies are unconstitutional.

Although these policies can help curb serious crime, at least temporarily, their long-term record is mixed at best. In Darby, Pottstown and Coatesville, serious crime has gone up since 2000, statistics show.

These high-arrest policies now in vogue in many cities across Pennsylvania and the nation also come with a cost.

The tactics can - and often do - go awry, resulting in the arrest of many innocent people, and creating resentment and racial strains in community after community, The Inquirer's review shows.