Police & Courts

Sarah Maslin Nir, an author and New York Times journalist who has been nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize, has filed suit in New York State Supreme Court against a former Stephen Talkhouse bouncer, claiming he raped her on a beach in Springs in 2001 when she was 18 years old and he 31.

A blue Mazda pickup truck belonging to a 25-year-old Texas woman got stuck on Navy Beach in Montauk on the evening of Nov. 29. Two officers were able to push the vehicle to safety. The woman left the beach that night with an East Hampton Town-style souvenir: a ticket for lacking a beach-driving permit.

Suffolk County and East Hampton Town law enforcement agencies are seeking help from the public in identifying two men suspected of burglarizing Kenny’s Castaways, a Montauk bar and restaurant, on Nov. 9.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney on Tuesday announced the arrest of a Montauk man said to be responsible for spray-painting swastikas and antisemitic phrases in the hamlet on Oct. 30 and Nov. 11.

The Sag Harbor Village Board, on Monday, formally served the village’s police chief, Austin J. McGuire, who had been suspended on Friday, with charges including misconduct, incompetence, and insubordination.

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, an independent nonprofit, petitioned the Suffolk County Supreme Court on Nov. 15 to ignore a statute of limitations that would prevent it from suing East Hampton Village for what the association alleges was a takeover of its ambulance service certificate and its bank account. 

A man with sex crime charges pending in North Carolina was taken into custody at the commercial fishing dock off West Lake Drive in Montauk on Nov. 17.

East Hampton Village police were called to a village-owned building at Two Mile Hollow Beach on the morning of Nov. 18 when it was discovered that a toilet had been used but not flushed, and in fact could not be flushed because the water had been turned off for the winter.

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.