POLICE USE DRUG DEALER'S PROPERTY

Mobile Station To Use Three Sites

Three Petersburg houses seized from a drug dealer will become sites for a
mobile police station to put more officers in blighted and crime-troubled
areas of the city.

Deeds to the three properties were transferred yesterday from the U.S.
government to the city of Petersburg in a ceremony led by Paul J. McNulty,
U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The transfer of the three properties forfeited by Hassan J. Llewellyn - now
serving 24 years in prison - was done under the federal Weed and Seed
Initiative.

The program seeks to first weed out criminal activity that plagues urban
areas and then seed urban communities with social and economic improvements.

Donald W. Thompson Jr., special agent in charge of the Richmond FBI office,
said drug dealers should get the message that cooperating federal, state
and local law enforcement will not only pursue them as criminals but also
will seize their "ill-gotten gains."

Petersburg police Chief Morris Jones said he plans to move his department's
movable police command unit - basically, a mobile home - from place to
place as crime-fighting needs warrant.

The houses on the three properties will be razed and the lots prepared to
set up the mobile station.

The properties were seized from Llewellyn, who was 33 when sentenced last
July to more than 24 years in federal prison for drug-trafficking
conspiracy and money-laundering of drug proceeds. He pleaded guilty to
those charges.

Llewellyn was a resident of Petersburg but had purchased a house in
Maryland, in addition to the three Petersburg properties. Authorities said
he bought them as legitimate investments, but with drug money.

"These guys make a lot of money and they are sometimes smart investors,"
Thompson said.