NEWBURGH – Police continue to look for six people wanted in connection with a major drug dealing enterprise that controlled trafficking in the City Terrace and First Street area of Newburgh. Fifteen suspects were rounded up on Tuesday, including Raymond Rivera of Newburgh, a well-respected resident, who ran a boxing school for youths.
Newburgh Police Chief Daniel Cameron said on Wednesday that they will continue to fight the criminal element.
The chief said a team of police officers, firefighters and code enforcement
officers are going through the neighborhood inspecting residences there
to determine if they are within code. He pledged to keep the heat on that
neighborhood and any others identified through crime data analysis as
being hotbeds for drug trafficking and violence.
“Crime is attracted to areas where it appears that nobody cares,” Cameron said.
Major David Krause, detail commander of the State Police CNET, said officers confiscated some 1,200 bags of heroin, 45 grams of loose heroin, 15 grams of cocaine, two semi-automatic handguns and $9,000 in cash during Tuesday’s operation, which involved 150 officers.
Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler outlined the hierarchy of who brought the drugs into Newburgh and who controlled their distribution and sales. Earl Melvin, 36, of First Street in Newburgh was labeled as one of the main distributors of heroin in the city.
Those “mercenaries of death” stand to make between 100 percent and 300 percent profit when they sell the drugs on the street, Hoovler said.
Authorities declined to put a dollar value on the amount of drugs sold weekly in this operation.
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