Police & Courts

Two Marine Patrol officers observed some 10 vehicles parked between mile markers 1A and 13A on Napeague on Nov. 14, shortly after 9 p.m., and questioned their owners. Every truck belonged to someone who was fishing on the beach for tuna or striped bass. No one was ticketed.

The steel-hulled, 60-foot trawler named Act I, captained by Chuck Morici, had caught 4,000 pounds of porgy and had no issues on Nov. 15 before near tragedy occurred: “A three-inch piece of steel let go by the keel cooler pipe,” he said by phone on dry land Monday. “I could see daylight through the hull.” Three Coast Guard stations were called in to save the day.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Clean Slate Act into law last Thursday, saying that “the best crime-fighting tool is a good-paying job. That’s why I support giving New Yorkers a clean slate after they’ve paid their debt to society and gone years without an additional offense.”

Public school districts on the South Fork are increasingly turning to retired police officers to fill critical security roles. “These are people who have children in the schools or have gone through the schools themselves, who know the community. They’re familiar faces, and they’re responsive,” said Adam Fine, the East Hampton School District superintendent.

The first time this happened, the community responded in force that same afternoon with a rally attended by hundreds at the downtown Montauk green. While there was no rally this time around, a group of Montauk School students and parents took matters into their own hands by painting over the hateful scrawlings by day’s end with a colorful mural.

Police got a call about “two subjects performing lewd acts in a white Nissan Rogue” at Main Beach last Thursday night. Officers found just one person in the car, a woman who said she’d been watching a movie on her phone.

Three fire departments battled a blaze Wednesday afternoon that destroyed a house on Springs-Fireplace Road near Harrison Avenue in Springs. The house had been unoccupied but for multiple pets, which are thought to have died in the fire.

A steel-hulled fishing vessel out of Montauk named Act I began sinking Wednesday morning about five nautical miles south of Watch Hill, R.I., east of Fishers Island. The Coast Guard Station in Montauk was called to assist.

East Hampton Village police nabbed a man and a woman from Queens on Friday who they say match the description of shoplifters who hit the Balenciaga store twice this year, once on July 1 and again on Sept. 17. A spokesperson for Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said by email on Tuesday that there was "no indication" that the pair are connected to the organized gang from Newark, N.J., who carried out a dramatic daytime handbag heist at the shop in March 2022.

East Hampton Town police are canvassing downtown Montauk after new antisemitic graffiti was discovered Saturday morning on the side of Bounce Beach Montauk on South Emerson Street. 

A man was seen stealing a pack of Boar’s Head bacon on Friday morning at Damark’s Market on Three Mile Harbor Road. After an officer spoke to him, the man returned to the store to pay $8.

The Amagansett Fire Department, with help from the East Hampton Fire Department, contained a house fire that shut down Montauk Highway near Handy Lane for about three hours last Thursday afternoon.