SPITZER SUES LANDLORD TO FORCE DRUG DEALER'S EVICTION

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. -- The state attorney general said Tuesday he is suing a
landlord to force the eviction of a drug-dealing tenant and to upgrade the
security of the building.

"Landlords who know that they have tenants who are dealing drugs have to
act on that information," Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said outside the
building on South Second Avenue in Mount Vernon's troublesome Third Street
corridor.

"In this case we had a landlord who knew. ... Yet nothing had been done to
hold up and protect the rights of the (other) tenants."

Spitzer's office said that tenant, Sonia Bryan, 46, had repeated
convictions for marijuana offenses and that cocaine had also been sold in
the building. Three of the eight apartments had been involved in recent
drug prosecutions, he said.

The suit, against landlord Anthony Manganiello, 39, demands that Bryan be
evicted and that cameras, locks and a security service be installed.

Bryan did not answer her doorbell. Manganiello did not return a telephone
message left at his home.

Spitzer has brought similar lawsuits against landlords in Albany, Newburgh
and Utica, and said those buildings had been freed from drug dealers.

If the Mount Vernon lawsuit is successful, he said, the landlord will face
contempt-of-court prosecution unless he carries out the measures demanded.

Inside the building, O'Neil Gray, 29, held a baby boy and said he had been
trying to get his mother, a tenant, to leave the building because of the
drug dealing.

"What they need here is a curfew. That would solve it. If you have to get
off the street by 9 o'clock you won't be here doing drugs," he said.

Mayor Ernest Davis said he hoped Spitzer's lawsuit _ and his appearance
Tuesday in Mount Vernon _ would help the revitalization of the Third Street
area.

"Drug dealers are like buzzards," he said. "If you're dying, the buzzard
will circle around you. ... If they find a weak community or a weak spot,
they will take that and the cancer tends to thrive."