RALEIGH — For more than a year, police and state alcohol law enforcement agents have been working hard to crack down on crime in southeast Raleigh, and now their efforts are paying off.

The goal for the crackdown is to make southeast Raleigh a tough place for drug dealers to do business.

"In this area, this is a project we are taking very seriously," says Ken Pike, state ALE agent. "Our goal is to eliminate the problem that these people feel and to make them feel safe in their environment."

Over the past two days, Pike and his fellow agents have been surprised. They have made the smallest number of drug arrests since the program began a year ago.

From his convenience store on Bragg Street, Joe Kabir has seen the change.

"About a year ago, I would not bring my family down here," Kabir says. "Now, I can leave my car unlocked with no doubt about it and the door to the store wide open."

Pike knows that there is still work to do in the area.

"We're not naive enough to think that the job is over," Pike says. "We want people to know that we take our job very seriously, and when we say that we want to help the quality of life improve, we mean that."

In the past two days, there have been nine arrests in the southeast Raleigh area. Last year, there was a total of 28 arrests in the two-day period.