DA: 400 Grams of Cocaine Found in Flanders House

Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said Faustino Juarez, the man arrested on major felony drug charges at his Flanders house on Friday, was an active drug dealer with an extensive criminal history.

The East End Drug Task Force found 400 grams of powdered cocaine, packaged heroin, and two handguns, one of them loaded, when they raided Juarez's house at 63 Riverside Avenue at 6:15 a.m. The Southampton Police Department’s Emergency Services team, along with task force detectives from participating East End police agencies and the County Sheriff’s K-9 unit, executed the search warrant.

They discovered the cocaine and a bundle of heroin, which Spota said in a press release is one gram of heroin divided in 10 bags packaged for street sale. The two handguns found were a .9 millimeter and a loaded .32 revolver.

Over $20,000 in cash was seized, believed to be proceeds from drugs sales, he 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," Spota said.

A grand jury has been convened, he said.

Juarez, 30, served 10 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 of a controlled substance and was sentenced to three years in an Upstate prison. He was paroled April 6, 2012, and finished his parole supervision one year later.

Juarez pleaded not guilty to drug and weapons charges and is being held without bail at the county jail.

The 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 task force 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.