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

NR Page 3

In total, Mr. Spota’s office released the names and arrest details of 10 people — others had been arrested by police in November, though some of their names were not released — who were nabbed in the six raids that resulted from the investigation. The first warrant was executed on Oct. 31 in Mastic, where police recovered two long guns — a shotgun and a .50-caliber rifle — pills and marijuana from a residence, according to the DA’s office.

The names released this week also included Kenneth Belcher Jr., 27, William Brown, 28, and Anton Mack, 24, all of Riverhead. Mr. Spota’s office indicated that all three men are confirmed Bloods members. All three were charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance and criminal possession of a controlled substance.

Police had also arrested Madison Murrell, 33, of Quogue. He pleaded guilty Feb. 3 to attempted criminal possession of a controlled substance and is expected to be sentenced to two years in prison, according to the DA’s office.

Mr. Mack’s court-appointed lawyer, David Geller, said it was too soon to comment on specifics of the case, but shed doubt on the claim that his client was a Bloods member.

“I certainly haven’t seen any proof that he’s a member of any gang,” he said. “The DAs have a habit of saying everyone’s in a gang.”

Quandol Lewis, 30, of Riverhead, was arrested in the raid at the Northampton home where Mr. Hopkins was arrested in November.

His lawyer, Lori Hulse, also a deputy town attorney in Southold and a local school board member, said her client “has no relationship at all with that [Lewis Street] address.”

She pointed out that of the 10 different types of charges being leveled against the people named by the prosecution in connection with the Lewis Street investigation, her client is facing only two charges: fourth-degree conspiracy and criminal possession of a controlled substance in the fourth degree. He was released without having to pay bail.

“He’s been a resident [in Riverhead] for a long time,” Ms. Hulse said of Mr. Lewis. “He clearly isn’t being characterized in the same manner as some of the other people.”

Investigators said police were called to the Millbrook Gables neighborhood 122 times in about a year leading up to the arrests and that 78 of those calls were directly related to 29 Lewis St. They said neighborhood children were frequently exposed to an open-air drug market.

“Every morning a [school] bus would stop across the street from that residence,” said Frank Guidice, a top investigator in the DA’s office. “And in the afternoon it would drop the kids off.”

Mr. Spota on Monday also displayed a photo of a man on the building’s front lawn waving what appears to be a TEC-9 semiautomatic handgun, with about six other people standing nearby. The DA said those pictured included children.

“Here are the kids,” he said while holding up the photo, taken from a surveillance camera.