Police Break Up 400-Person Party at Long Island
Mansion
Flouting the state’s pandemic restrictions on
gatherings, hundreds of people flocked to a castle-like estate in Brookhaven on
Sunday night.
Police say a gated mansion in Brookhaven, on Long
Island, was the scene of a massive party that flouted restrictions on
gatherings.
Michael
Gold
By Michael
Gold
Dec. 2,
2020
The first
calls that police received about an enormous gathering at a castle-like mansion
on Long Island came shortly after midnight on Monday, the authorities said.
Neighbors reported a suspicious number of cars racing around and vehicles
parked bumper-to-bumper on their normally quiet streets.
As more
reports came in — including one from the home’s owner, who had rented his
property to a guest on Airbnb and discovered the gathering while watching his
security cameras from afar — the police went to the house, a lavish stone
building in Brookhaven, N.Y.
When they
arrived, they found as many as 400 people gathered for a party, officials said,
in an explicit violation of New York State’s limits on private gatherings
during the coronavirus pandemic.
The party,
held at a gated luxury home owned by a one-time rapper who once hoped to be New
York City’s nightlife mayor, was the latest in a string of illicit gatherings
in Suffolk County on Long Island. Persuading people to obey state directives
and public health guidance has proved challenging for officials, even as a
surge of coronavirus cases sweeps across New York.
“There’s no
question that an event like this is a public health issue,” said Chief Stuart
Cameron of the Suffolk County Police Department at a news conference on
Tuesday.
For months,
elected leaders and officials across the United States have been pleading with
residents to avoid indoor gatherings over concern that they had been
contributing to an uptick in cases this fall. Though epidemiologists have been
less certain that such get-togethers are the source of infections, a number of
state and local governments have established restrictions to limit them.
Last month,
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo imposed a 10-person limit on all private gatherings in the
state. Though a number of sheriffs said they would not enforce the order,
especially on Thanksgiving, Suffolk County’s executive said his county’s police
department planned to uphold it.
For months,
Suffolk County, at the eastern end of Long Island, has made news for gatherings
both large and small. In July, when the state had just emerged from a crushing
wave of the pandemic, more than 2,150 people attended a charity concert
featuring the D.J. duo the Chainsmokers. In October, county officials announced
a number of parties that they called “superspreader events,” including a
gathering of 200 to 300 people in Farmingville, N.Y.
The problem
is not exclusive to Long Island. The New York City sheriff’s office has broken
up large parties every weekend over the last several months.
“I just
think there are some people who, despite all of the warnings and the damage
that we’ve seen from this virus, don’t think they need to follow the rules and
aren’t concerned about others,” Steve Bellone, the Suffolk County executive,
said in an interview on Wednesday.
Mr. Bellone
added that despite the attention paid to such large events, small gatherings
had actually been driving an uptick in cases in Suffolk County since Halloween.
Such get-togethers have become the predominant source of spread in the county,
he said.
Over the
last month, Suffolk has seen its positive test rate move from 1.2 percent to
5.2 percent, Mr. Bellone said. Hospitalizations rose from 42 on Nov. 1 to 248
on Dec. 1, and Mr. Bellone said the numbers had started to jump again after
Thanksgiving.
The party
in Brookhaven particularly stood out, he said, both because of its size and
because it was hosted not by the homeowner, but by an out-of-state visitor who
had rented the house on Airbnb.
Officials
were still trying to identify the person responsible for the party, who they
believed was from New Jersey, the police said. Investigators did not yet know
if the person who rented the Airbnb was the person who threw the party.
A Suffolk
County police spokeswoman said that charges had not yet been filed on Wednesday
morning.
Officials
believed the party was a “high-end” affair, with most attendees in their 30s or
40s, Mr. Bellone said. The police who reported to the scene said that many of
the cars parked nearby were luxury vehicles or sports cars.
When the
police arrived at the home, a 5,000-square-foot stone building situated on
nearly 10 acres on a dead-end street, the party’s attendees followed orders to
disperse, Chief Cameron said.
But because
of the sheer number of people in attendance, the police were on the scene for
close to four hours as they tried to clear every guest, he said. The
department’s aviation, emergency service and canine units were all involved, he
said.
Despite violating
the ban on gatherings, none of the party’s attendees received summonses, the
police spokeswoman said.
Officials
were also not planning to file any charges against the homeowner, who Chief
Cameron said had cooperated with the investigation and had offered proof that
he had told the person renting the house about the gathering limit.
The owner
became aware of the gathering through cameras that were installed at the house,
Mr. Bellone said. One of the guests appeared to have tried to disable the cameras
so the party would escape notice, he added.
An Airbnb
listing for the house appeared to have been removed on Wednesday morning. But a
similar listing on Tripadvisor advertised the home as an “absolutely majestic
castle” with 11-foot ceilings and a 15-foot bar. The rate for a three-night
stay is $1,872, and the listing notes that any parties and events must be
discussed in advance.
The police
did not name the home’s owner, but tax records identified him as Matthew Demar.
Mr. Demar
did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to Newsday, he
was a rapper in the 1990s who used the name Kid Panic and is a former radio DJ.
In 2016, he released a song in support of President Trump titled “Make America
Great Again,” Newsday reported.
A video for
the song, which has more than 200,000 views on YouTube, shows Mr. Demar dressed
in a suit and rapping in various places around New York City. The following
year, Mr. Demar appeared in a YouTube video expressing his interest in becoming
New York City’s nightlife mayor, in which he called himself one of the first
white rappers.
The home,
at 51 Hawkins Lane, is currently listed for sale at $949,999 and has repeatedly
moved on and off the market since 2014, according to Zillow. Mr. Demar
purchased it in 2009, property records show.
Michael
Gold is a general assignment reporter on the Metro desk covering news in the
New York City region. @migold
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário