A federal indictment unsealed Friday charges that a 62-year-old Garfield man maintained his home as a haven for drug trafficking.
Federal prosecutors said other property owners, including landlords, could face similar charges if they failed to clean up their acts.
U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said Henry Keen, of Broad Street, was not the first person her office has prosecuted for operating a drug house, but his indictment was the first to stem from a new program that tries to target problem properties in a coordinated fashion.
If convicted, Keen faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a $500,000 fine. Prosecutors also will try to seize his home, assessed at $36,500, through federal asset forfeiture laws.
"It only takes a few drug houses to infect a neighborhood," Buchanan said. "We want to make sure the people who own those houses are held accountable."
Buchanan said law-enforcement authorities compiled a list of 100 problem properties. They contacted about 30 property owners, most of whom took corrective action, Buchanan said.
Buchanan said she toured Keen's neighborhood in July and watched a Pittsburgh police officer and a prosecutor from her office warn Keen to clean up the problems associated with his house. She said Keen also received follow-up letters, but refused to take action.
Witold J. "Vic" Walczak, the legal director of the state American Civil Liberties Union and head of the Pittsburgh chapter, said he was unfamiliar with the case and could not comment.
Authorities arrested Keen early yesterday. U.S. Magistrate Judge Amy Hay released him on a $50,000 unsecured bond.
The indictment alleges that the criminal activity occurred from May 2003 to August 2004. She said other people lived with Keen, but would not identify them.
The Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., which is striving to improve the neighborhood by building 50 new homes, brought Keen's property to Buchanan's attention. In July, gun-toting youngsters engaged in a shootout in front of the house, temporarily stopping construction of the homes, said Richard Swartz, executive director of the corporation.
"It's been a problem house for the past decade," Swartz said.
In an interview later yesterday, Keen disputed that the house in which he has lived for 36 years had anything to do with drugs. He said the neighborhood organization tried to buy the house for $25,000, which he rejected because he had nowhere else to live.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's clean," he said. "Me, myself and I, that's the whole crew that lives there."
Neighbors said the house was a nuisance.
"Sometimes there are gunshots in the daylight," said Thong Nguyen, 40, who runs a service station in the neighborhood. "They go pow, pow, pow!"
George Nels Salensky, 45, of Delmont, a construction worker helping build the new homes the neighborhood association is financing, said one day he was pouring concrete when gunfire erupted on the street.
"One guy came off the porch, shooting," he recalled. "A bunch of kids hang out there."
He said vandals also shot up a dump truck and spray-painted graffiti on a construction trailer.
