Two detectives and three police officers are accused of taking bribes from a street peddler in exchange for tips on counterfeit raids and favors, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, announced yesterday.

Four of the officers turned themselves in to police yesterday morning after an internal investigation found that they allegedly accepted merchandise from Jamil Faied, 45, a peddler who, the prosecutor said, hawked counterfeit handbags, caps, and sports jerseys on West 17th Street. Arrested were two veteran members of the 13th Precinct’s detective squad, Brian Bartlett, 37, and Rodney Lewis, 40, and two officers who were assigned to the New York Police Department’s Traffic Safety Unit, George Santiago, 38, and Jaime Albertelli, 31, Another officer with that unit, Jaushua Penalo, 32, was arrested last week. All five now face charges of bribe receiving and official misconduct.

“This was all fairly low-level stuff, but this is the way official corruption starts,” Mr. Morgenthau said.

The five policemen worked together in a unit designed to crack down on street peddlers selling counterfeit goods and imitation brand-name products. An investigation sparked by an anonymous tip to the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau concluded that the group allegedly ignored their mandate for at least one of the vendors who normally clog the sidewalks along the Flatiron District’s busy streets, a law enforcement official said.

Using a wiretap sting operation, investigators quickly set their sights on Mr. Penalo, who had been with the 13th Precinct for four years. According to information obtained through the investigation, Mr. Penalo allegedly alerted Mr. Faied in advance of a trademark counterfeit raid in the area, allowing the peddler enough time to move illegal merchandise he had stored in the building before police could carry out a search.

At Mr. Faeid’s request, Mr. Morgenthau said, Detectives Bartlett and Lewis allegedly issued a desk appearance ticket for another street peddler, rather than arresting the suspect. On another occasion, also at Mr. Faeid’s request, Mr. Morgenthau said, Officers Santiago and Albertelli allegedly forced a licensed street vendor to move from a spot where he was legally allowed to sell merchandise.

Police declined to assign a monetary value to the goods that the officers allegedly received but stressed that the quantity of goods was small and that the pattern of graft was limited to the five suspects already arrested.

“Most of the officers serve with distinction,” the chief of the Internal Affairs Bureau, Charles Campisi, said. “There is no reason to believe this is going on anyplace else.”

The area between 14th and 28th streets has been a hotbed of counterfeit activity in Manhattan, where knockoff clothing, perfume, CDs, and DVDs are readily available along side streets and in counterfeiting “minimalls.” The illegal business has become so widespread that a special mayoral initiative to squelch counterfeiting by targeting large-scale distribution rings and the landlords that house them had zeroed in on that area.

Last year, the authorities said, the city shut 10 buildings that housed counterfeiting operations, seized more than $20 million in knock-off merchandise, and recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in civil settlements, most of it stemming from investigations in the 13th Precinct.

Despite some successes, vendors in the area suggested a kind of symbiosis between police and the peddlers. Standing outside the 27th Street building where police closed a counterfeiting mini-mall in December and confiscated apparel, valued at more than $12 million, bearing fake brand names, licensed vendors Omar Spaulding, 26, and Robert Johnson, 25, said that though they had never seen police accepting bribes, they were not surprised by the news.

“Cops work with these guys,” Mr. Spaulding said. “They know what’s going on.”

The allegations come at a bad time for the Police Department, however, after a recent news report suggested that, to maintain staffing levels, the department had been hiring some unqualified and unfit applicants. Mayor Bloomberg downplayed the significance of that report and yesterday’s arrests.

“We have roughly 37,000 police officers, and the size of our Police Department is probably bigger than most cities. So there will be a bad apple here or there,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “In terms of, are we hiring the right people, take a look at the crime statistics.”

“Nobody should jump to any conclusions in this case,” the president of the Police Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, said. “We should let the proceedings go forward and see where it leads us.”

If convicted on all charges, the officers could face up to 11 years in prison. Mr. Faied, the vendor, was charged with bribery, a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison.