St. Johns County deputies raid convenience store in drug, gambling investigation

HASTINGS, Fla. – A convenience store in Hastings was raided Friday as investigators searched the business for drugs and gambling-related items.

The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office searched the 207 Express convenience store on West Church Street.

Deputies did not release details about what was found during the raid as the investigation is still active, but News4JAX Crime and Safety Analyst Tom Hackney talked about the link between drug activity and more serious crimes.

“Although that search warrant was somewhat narrow and focused maybe towards the narcotics and the gambling aspect of this location it’s no surprise that especially the narcotics portion of this goes along with violence,” he said. How many times even this year alone have we just seen some nexus to a murderer that somehow related to narcotics in some way form or fashion.”

The store was reopened after the hours-long search.

“It’s a little bit of speculation when it comes to knowing whether or not the search warrant was successful or not. You would tend to think if it was successful, in many cases, they would shut down that business,” Hackney said.

Hackney spent 29 years with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

“I know that’s happened in the past and certainly with JSO and Duval County. When we’ve gone into one of these gambling houses that we’ve found to be operating illegally or have something more to it, we would remove the machines that they would use because they’re illegal, and really shut the business down. So the fact that they’re back open, you know, it could go either way. It could be something that the St Johns County Sheriff’s Office is still working the case to make it stronger based on what they found during the search warrant. Or it could mean that they didn’t find anything at all,” Hackney said.

Hackney also talked about how the community can be impacted by these crimes.

“Here’s a little bit of gambling. Now that seems like a victimless crime. If people want to go spend their money on whatever machines they have in there to do it. And what’s the harm? Well, again, goes back to the narcotics aspect of that, so the narcotics, potentially bring into violence and the violence spills over to to people in that community.”

New4JAX tried to speak to the store’s owner but they were not in.