Recent Stories: Police

Amagansett

A Stihl chainsaw and a Jaquelyne armchair were taken from a Surf Drive house early last month. To replace the missing items it will cost about $800.

East Hampton

Three screens were cut over the winter months in an apparent attempt to gain entry to a Cedar Street house. The owner, Scott Smith, told police on Friday that the house had been unoccupied from January through April. Despite the damage to the screens, valued at $60 each, there was no break-in.

    An Amagansett man who drove his 2010 Ford into a utility pole on Friday night was drunk at the time, according to East Hampton Town police, and wound up charged with an alcohol-related felony, aggravated driving while intoxicated.
    The crash happened less than a mile from Kevin J. Somers’s house on Abram’s Landing Road. A witness, who said the crash happened right outside his house, told police that Mr. Somers, 37, had climbed out of his wrecked car and asked to use his bathroom.

    Fidel Castro-Brito, an East Hampton man charged with 76 counts of rape involving girls as young as 9, pleaded guilty as charged in State Supreme Court, Riverhead, last Thursday.
    East Hampton Town police said at the time of his arrest that Mr. Castro-Brito, 24, had found his victims, who ranged in age from 9 to 16, through the Internet. The investigation took the police across jurisdictional lines, with all the assaults occurring in downstate New York.

A former New York City police officer was arrested by East Hampton Village police Friday following an incident earlier in the week at John M. Marshall Elementary School during which he had allegedly identified himself as an active N.Y.P.D. officer and questioned staff and a village police officer stationed there about school security, police said.

    A woman took her husband’s 2003 Porsche for a Sunday night drive on April 21 and it ended up at the bottom of Napeague Harbor.
    At about 10 that night East Hampton Town police got a call from Lazy Point near the main boat ramp reporting a woman screaming for help. When an officer arrived, Joann Hamilton, 57, was being helped out of the water by two people who had been walking nearby.

Amagansett
Police received a call Friday reporting that an Atlantic Avenue house had had its roof damaged earlier this month. The caller said she had an ongoing feud over the property with her father, and suspected him of tearing shingles off the roof.
A longboard-style Original Pintail skateboard was stolen from outside Christine Ganeaux’s shop, Ganeaux, on Sunday afternoon. The multicolored board has green wheels and a black stripe down the center, and is valued at $300.

    Edward M. Orr, who pleaded guilty last month to the Oct. 25, 2012, hit-and-run killing of an Amagansett man, John Judge, was sentenced yesterday in a near-empty courtroom to serve two to six years in state prison.

    Two East Hampton Village police officers were promoted in a ceremony at the village board’s meeting on Friday.
    Detective Gregory J. Brown was promoted to the rank of sergeant, at an annual base salary of $130,658, and Officer Steven B. Sheades was transferred to the detective division. His annual base salary will be $115,184. Both promotions are effective as of Wednesday.

   An East Hampton man, Melvin C. Smith, 46, was arrested on April 10 by East Hampton Town police on charges of assault in the second degree, a class D felony, and possession of a deadly weapon, a knife, as a misdemeanor. The charges stem from a fight on Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton on the afternoon of April 9. Joseph Giannini, Mr. Smith’s attorney, has alleged that race was a factor in Mr. Smith’s arrest.
    Mr. Smith is black; the other man involved is white.

    The number of drunken-driving arrests made by East Hampton Town police last month was down by half from the March 2012 figure, from 24 to 12.
    Capt. Michael Sarlo cautioned, however, that no inference should be drawn from the decrease. “Year to date, our number of arrests are just below where we were last year at this time,” he said Tuesday, while speculating that increased public awareness of the dangers and risks of drunken driving may also be a factor.

    The East Hampton Town Police Department has hired two new officers, Tom Strong, 33, and Mike Rodriguez, 23, both of East Hampton. With Capt. Michael Sarlo acting as mentor, the department started them on Monday on a 12-week orientation and on-the-job training program.

    On the cool morning of March 25, East Hampton Village Police Chief Gerard Larsen was sitting in his unmarked car in the Main Beach parking lot, sipping a cup of hot coffee, when a gold Mercedes-Benz rolled up next to him.
    The Mercedes driver lowered his window, and the chief did likewise.
    “I thought he wanted directions,” Chief Larsen said Tuesday. Instead, the man asked the chief if he smoked grass.