One of Mayor Anthony Williams’s (D) recurring nightmares: After mortgaging the city treasury and his own political legacy to bring Major League Baseball in the form of the Nationals to Washington, skittish suburban fans stay away because of fear of street thugs in that place called “Southeast.”

Recent events keep him from waking up. A wavelet of crime, capped with an utterly senseless shooting near Eastern High School, seems to be mounting, and along with it a double-edged fear in the hearts of the young couples and professionals who inhabit the streets close to Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, Police Service Area (PSA) 107.

The neighborhood stretches south of East Capitol and 13th streets S.E. to the Anacostia River, includes Congressional Cemetery and the stadium, and has been the target of many young urbanites seeking the elusive affordable row house. Prices have spiked to many multiples of their levels a few years ago.

Recent Police Service Area meetings have been strained. Residents claim police have not been doing enough. There have been hints drug dealers in the area have intimidated police by having relatives call and complain about police harassment, and some residents claim a hired note taker is working for the drug dealers, attending each meeting to scope out police strategies.

In the background is another fear — the youngsters who have obtained large mortgages at favorable rates are terrified that the pall of crime may undercut their investment — and they downplay any crime news as a result.

One outspoken local leader, author Jim Myers, has circulated a controversial poster spoofing the dangers. It offers “Official” Washington Nationals bulletproof vests, which according to the flier “give sure fire protection throughout the District of Columbia.” Prices go from $595 to $1,595, “with genuine player autograph.” He has often used unusual means to bring police attention to neighborhood problems.

He told The Hill that 1st District police are already responding. “I don’t want to sound down on them,” he said. “The police are really trying.”

But the newspapers were having a field day with the latest shooting — a 15-year-old boy was shot twice by a gunman in a car last week after he refused to surrender his “North Face” overcoat near Eastern. The wounds were not life-threatening, but the memorable story raised tensions with residents far beyond its seriousness.

Thousands of steel bollards sunk in concrete (cost a secret), hundreds of Jersey barriers, understreet pop-ups, progressive street closures, spy cameras, a $600 million visitors center, increased manpower and equipment of the Capitol Police, unprecedented power for the Capitol Police Board to pile on more security measures: All those have been done to protect members of Congress and their staffs.

Yet one of the most obvious methods of crippling the Capitol — blocking or placing explosives in the network of tunnels beneath the Capitol — has been completely ignored while officials, led by Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer, concentrate on “Maginot Line” defenses: guards, concrete and steel.

The famed Maginot Line, of course, was the defensive wall erected by the French before World War II to stall invasion. The Germans simply ignored it, sweeping past its end at the Belgian border.

Hill residents and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) have been successively infuriated and appalled at the expense and manpower expended. Yet the Maginot concept thrives, while trains carrying deadly chemicals such as chlorine gas that pass directly under Capitol Hill are ignored and Union Station passengers are unscreened.

The curious fact is that, though Capitol Police rule unchallenged above ground, taking over street after street, they have no authority on the rail lines, which are under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation and are owned by the rail companies. This is part of the reason that only a rusting chain-link fence keeps intruders from the tunnels, and in many places not even that.

When a row was raised over dangerous chemicals in rail cars passing near the Capitol, the railroad industry lobbied to kill a D.C. City Council bill to reroute the cars. The pending rail-security bill, the Rail and Public Transportation Security Act of 2005, now before Congress asks mainly for an assessment of dangers and has had no visible effect on D.C’s tunnels.

One tunnel that carries trains enters the Hill from Virginia Avenue S.E. and continues under the neighborhood, emerging near Barney Circle S.E. Another enters at New Jersey Avenue and D Street S.E., turns north and passes under the Cannon Building, the Supreme Court and on to Union Station.

At Union Station, security consists of proof of identity and a ticket. While armed guards with menacing automatic weapons stride around the Capitol above ground, the station has no dogs, no screening.

Almost every detail about the rail tunnels, plus the tunnels used by members and staffs to travel quickly from the Capitol to nearby federal buildings, is readily available. A website for tunnel buffs, most of the information supplied by Congress and the railroads (www.clouse.org/rail) details the location with photographs and maps of the tunnels — and includes the mistaken information that “armed guards” are stationed at the New Jersey Avenue end of the tunnel. A recent photo foray found nobody, much less a guard, on duty.

In 2001, a rail-car fire in a Baltimore tunnel closed the Northeast rail corridor for days and alerted authorities to the possibilities of a horrific disaster. Experts estimated that a ruptured chlorine tank car would endanger people within a 14-mile radius.

Gerard Dunphy, the 71-year-old real-estate man who told Supreme Court Police that terrorists could easily strike rail tunnels under the court because they are unguarded (see related story), received a lecture and probation and was fined $15,378 by a federal judge Thursday.

Dunphy supporters, stone faced as Judge John M. Facciola sentenced Dunphy to a year’s probation plus the exactions, most of which ($13,378) were to reimburse Amtrak for stopping a south bound train, later called the case outrageous. “This could have happened to any one of us,” said real-estate agent Phyllis Jane Young.

Dunphy set off a police and security panic Dec. 6 when he told police at a Hill checkpoint that underground rail tunnels near the Capitol were unguarded. They took his comment as a threat (though Dunphy vows he made no threats), and the longtime resident was arrested and later charged with making a false statement to officers concerning “weapons of mass destruction.”

Dunphy, who pleaded guilty on advice of his lawyers, said he was glad the ordeal was over. “I was pleading for more security,” he told the court. Dunphy’s lawyer Allen Dale said the Hill had become “the militarized zone of Capitol Hill” because of security measures.

METRO

• Barry Watch: High activity for former Mayor Marion Barry — waiting out son Christopher’s hearing on assault charges, scolding Major League Baseball for skinning the District on the baseball deal and hatching a scheme to redevelop mothballed Congress Heights School in Anacostia as a job-training center. ...

• Hill developer Win Sealander was driving calmly through Northwest when something hit his late model Volvo a heavy blow. Sealander was astonished to see that a full gown deer had crashed into the car, caving in the door panel and leaving tufts of hair, then limping away. ...

• The mercury-scare industry is booming now that kids know the stuff’s practically everywhere, in fluorescent light tubes, thermostats, even your teeth. Call the Environmental Protection Agency, the Post comes running, and whatever is going on stops for an expensive cleanup session. ...

• After paying $9 (not a typo) for a glass of middling red wine at Finn Mac Cool’s on 8th Street, Hill residents who want to continue the St. Patrick’s Day spirit might check the Grand Slam Sports Bar at the Hyatt at 1000 H St. N.W., where for the rest of the month they’re offering a soup and sandwich, plus a glass of Guinness, for $7.50. ...

• Whoops — if you forgot that street-sweeping rules were back in force March 21, you may have netted a $30 ticket. Once a week on most residential streets, the sweepers come by before 11 a.m., and you had better not be parked in their path. ...

• Air Tran’s article about the Eastern Market flea market titled “King of the Fleas” has raised a ruckus in some quarters, especially among the market’s food vendors who are furious that knickknacks and not food get the play. “Where is the market’s advertising and promotion plan?” one asked. ...

• Antique & Contemporary Leasing, the bold little company that restored the warehouses at 709 12th St. S.E. has moved out, selling to Cesar Chavez Public Charter School, which plans to open when renovations are done as a high school offering “rigorous college prep curriculum for every student.” The plan got Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6B approval this month.