Video surveillance, wire taps: Inside the Lewis Street drug bust

After requests for a sit-down with the DA about police actions at Lewis Street — first reported by the News-Review in November, when details were still scant — Mr. Spota and two of his top investigators agreed to meet with News-Review editors at his Hauppauge offices Monday.

During the meeting, Mr. Spota also shared video clips from hidden surveillance cameras that appear to show two separate drug deals taking place outside the vacant house.

“It looked like the Fourth of July every day, there were so many people,” Mr. Spota said of the scene on Lewis Street. “It was just 24 hours a day, right in the middle of the streets they were dealing drugs. Police were being foiled by associates of the drug dealers who were blocks and blocks away. As soon as the cops came into the development the word went out, so by time the police got there the only thing there was the drugs, remnants or whatever. They would just take off.”

Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller soon signaled for the task force to initiate an investigation, the culmination of which came in November, when four warrants were executed in three days, including a Wednesday afternoon raid on Nov. 5 at the Lewis Street house, which is owned by a former attorney for the Town of Southold. That warrant execution was followed on Nov. 7 by three early morning raids at houses on Doctors Path and Union Avenue in Riverhead, and a home on Pine Court in Northampton. It was at Pine Court that police found Romaine Hopkins, 32, who, while not a known gang member, had the requisite connections to the Bloods gang, which had control over the ramshackle Lewis Street property, Mr. Spota said. There, he was allegedly able to sell drugs — mostly crack-cocaine and heroin — out in the open. The DA and the investigators noted, however, that violence would occasionally erupt over that turf among people with Bloods ties.

Reached this week, Mr. Hopkins’ lawyer, Anthony Scheller of Central Islip, said his office needed more time before he offered any specific comments about his client’s case.

“Obviously, he’s presumed innocent until they prove him guilty,” Mr. Scheller said. “We’ve got some investigating to do. But he’s engaged to be married, he supports his children, he has three children with his fiancée, and that’s about it right now.”