Video surveillance, wire taps: Inside the Lewis Street drug bust
The Lewis Street house is owned by former Southold Town attorney Greg Yakaboski, who told the News-Review in November that he had “lost track” of the property after a “rental situation went bad.”
“It was a classic situation where we had bad tenants a couple years ago,” said Mr. Yakaboski. “Everything went south from there.”
The house was then boarded up by Riverhead code enforcement after unsafe conditions were found inside.
Mr. Spota said his office has not had contact with Mr. Yakaboski.
A former longtime resident of the often troubled Millbrook Gables neighborhood, between East Main Street and Route 58, said this week that she blames absentee landlords in part for the area’s problems. She called on the town to do a better job of cracking down on them.
“We have quite a few houses that have been rehabbed, and new houses,” said the woman, who still has family in the neighborhood. “They need to check on the rental houses, period, because it’s not just our neighborhood. Code enforcement needs to check them more and when they give a summons, they need to check on them again.”
Of crime and other quality-of-life issues, she said it’s not just the people who live there.
“It’s people coming in,” she said. “That’s part of the problem.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Spota said he expects the East End Drug Task Force to make more arrests in relation to the Lewis Street investigation. The task force is a coalition of law enforcement agencies operating within Suffolk County’s five eastern towns. He said 2014 was its busiest year ever, going by arrest numbers.
Of Mr. Strong’s arrest last week, Mr. Spota said, “the wiretap led us to him.”
