Flanders, NY - Novemver 27, 2013 - The East End Drug Task Force has arrested a Flanders man and seized 400 grams of powdered cocaine, and two handguns, one of them loaded. District Attorney Thomas Spota said the Southampton Police Department’s Emergency Services team with Task Force detectives from participating east end police agencies and the County Sheriff’s K-9 executed a search warrant at Faustino Juarez’s residence at 6:15 in the morning on Friday, November 22.
“The Task Force entered 63 Riverside Drive and secured the cocaine, arrested the suspect and found the handguns, a .9 millimeter and a loaded .32 revolver and one bundle of heroin – that’s one gram of heroin divided in ten bags and packaged for street sale,” DA Spota said.
Over $20,000 in cash was seized, believed to be proceeds from drugs sales, Spota said.
“This was a long-term investigation of a very active drug dealer in the community, a defendant with an extensive criminal history who had a loaded weapon and another handgun in his house. A grand jury is reviewing evidence in the case,” District Attorney Spota said.
Juarez served ten months in the county jail in 2002 for attempted possession of a controlled substance in 2002. In 2004 he was imprisoned upstate for two to four years for criminal possession of a controlled substance and released in 2008 after serving his entire sentence. In 2010 the defendant was convicted of attempted criminal possession n of a controlled substance and was sentenced on April 10 of that year to three years in an upstate prison and was paroled April 6, 2012 and finished his parole supervision one year later.
The defendant pled not guilty to drug and weapons charges and is incarcerated in the county jail without bail.
District Attorney Spota said the Juarez investigation relied heavily on the expertise and leadership provided by Southampton Town detectives assigned to the task force.
The Suffolk County District Attorney leads the East End Drug Task Force, a multi-jurisdictional drug enforcement unit with operations funded by the DA’s office and comprised of village, township, county, and state law enforcement departments, agencies and offices. The EEDTF includes detectives, police officers, prosecutors and law enforcement professionals from the New York State Police, the Suffolk County Police Department, District Attorney Detective-Investigators, East Hampton Town Police Department, East Hampton Village Police Department, Southampton Town Police Department, Shelter Island Police Department, Southold Police Department, Riverhead Police Department, Suffolk County Sheriff's Department, and the Suffolk County Probation Department.