SPITZER'S TARGET: ALBANY LANDLADY

Woman Owns Alleged `Drug House'

ALBANY -- Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed suit Monday against the owner
of a reputed "drug house" in Albany's South End, trying to close down what
officials said is a center of criminal activity that has blighted a
neighborhood.

The suit, which invokes a little-used state law, targets the owner of 64
Alexander St., Deborah L. Landy, along with one of her tenants and four
other men who have been repeatedly arrested at the house and charged with
selling or possessing marijuana and other drugs.

Spitzer's office is seeking a court order forbidding the tenant, James
Farmer, and the four other men from coming within 200 feet of the building.
Landy would be required to evict Farmer, take action to prevent any further
drug dealing on her property, and correct various building-code violations.
If she fails to comply, she could face fines of up to $1,000 per day,
forfeiture of the property and other sanctions, officials said.

"The message we're sending is very simple: Drug dealers cannot plant a flag
in a neighborhood and continue to come back," Spitzer said at a Capitol
news conference.

According to the attorney general's petition in state Supreme Court, Farmer
has been convicted four times in the past two years for drug crimes,
including possession of marijuana and possession of crack cocaine.

The other four men named in the suit are brothers - Charles Robinson,
Edward Robinson Jr., Mark Robinson and Stevie Robinson - whom police
describe as members of a "well-established drug ring." The Robinsons do not
live at 64 Alexander, but each of them has been arrested there on drug
charges at least once in the past five years, according to the petition.

"The landlady knows the dealers have been there, yet she continues to rent
and let this location be used for drug dealing," Spitzer said. "These
individuals who have been dealing marijuana, and doing it repeatedly, have
destroyed a neighborhood."

Attempts to contact Landy and Charles Robinson at numbers listed in the
phone book were unsuccessful. No one answered the door at 64 Alexander St.
Monday afternoon.

Spitzer said Monday's court action was the first in a series of similar
suits his office would bring as part of a "Clean Sweep" initiative
targeting drug houses in cities across New York. Spitzer first announced
the initiative at Albany's City Hall in May.

Mayor Jerry Jennings, along with city police officials and neighborhood
activists, attended the news conference to praise Spitzer's action.

"That is the message we've been waiting for . . . that the South End is not
going to tolerate this kind of behavior anymore," said Linda Miller, an
activist with the Police Department's "Weed and Seed" program.

"Drugs not only destroy people who use them," Millers said. "Drugs destroy
a whole family. They destroy a community."

Officials said Albany police have been trying to stop drug-dealing at 64
Alexander since 1995, repeatedly conducting surveillance, making undercover
drug buys, searching the house, arresting its occupants and winning
convictions in court.

But because the crimes involved relatively small quantities of drugs,
usually marijuana, the people arrested spent little or no time in jail and
quickly returned to the same house.

"What this does is give us another tool to get the message out," Jennings
said. "It says to landlords, loud and clear: `It's your property, but we're
not going to let you abuse it.' "

The law being used by Spitzer, originally enacted in 1909 and amended in
the 1980s, makes landlords liable for knowingly allowing illegal business
to be conducted on their property. The law says the owner is presumed to be
aware of the illegal activity if there have been two or more arrests within
the past year.

Spitzer, a Democrat who took office in 1999, said the law has lain
"dormant" for 20 years, and that the Albany case could set a precedent for
similar action against drug houses across the state. "For the first time
you're saying it's not just the dealer, but the owner of the property who's
responsible," he said.

But Spitzer's Republican predecessor as attorney general, Dennis Vacco,
filed a very similar suit against the owners of an apartment complex in
Hempstead, Long Island, in 1996. In response to the suit, the owners of
Bedell Terrace agreed to evict people engaging in illegal activity and
upgrade security at the 18-building complex, according to news reports at
the time. Less than a year later, Bedell Terrace was the center of a
dramatic drug sweep involving dozens of arrests.

The two-story clapboard duplex at 64 Alexander St., at the corner of
Elizabeth Street, appeared to be empty Monday afternoon. People in the
neighborhood acknowledged to reporters that the building had been a center
of drug-dealing in the past, but said they believed the activity had died
down recently.

"The police have just about cleared that up," said Morris Darden, who lives
next door at 62 Alexander. "There used to be a real bad corner here. . . .
But it's no problem now."

"I'm here from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day," said another man, who said he
was renovating a building across the street but would not give his name. "I
don't see no heavy drug activity in there. I don't see any activity at
all."

But officials at the news conference said the drug dealing had not gone
away. They showed a videotape taken by a surveillance camera during a
half-hour period Jan. 24, in which several men went in and out of the house
and walked up and down on the sidewalks outside. Detective Sgt. Marc Lehrer
of the Albany Police said some of the men were among those targeted by the
lawsuit, and none were tenants of the building.

Officials said the exact nature of Landy's relationship with the Robinsons
is not clear. She is listed as the owner of three other properties in the
city - 135 Fourth Ave. in the South End as well as 318 First St. and 228
First St. in Arbor Hill - and some of the Robinsons are tenants of those
other properties, said Paul Larrabee, a spokesman for the attorney
general's office.