As Angry Locals Talk of Civil Disobedience, Officials Promise Swift Response

How busy was the July Fourth weekend? So busy that new records were likely reached in East Hampton Town, in traffic, police activity, and general chaos.

The situation in Montauk, where a quantum leap in recent years in the number of visitors who come to party at a growing number of bars and clubs is a topic of ongoing friction, was so extreme that it was the talk of the town Monday morning and at a Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee meeting that night.

The acute summer headaches have engendered talk of civil disobedience by members of a new Facebook group called Montauk Locals — people who, says its page, “do not want our town destroyed or abused by out-of-towners that have no respect for our town and the locals, workers, and beaches.”

“No matter where I went in Montauk . . . all I heard from people was how upset and angry they were. We’ve had it,” said Perry Duryea III, a member of a well-known Montauk family, who took out a full-page ad in today’s Star to send an open letter to the community articulating his concerns. “We’re just maxed out.”

Besides complaints about music pounding out of hotels and clubs, public drunkenness, and traffic tie-ups, there were the concerns of Montauk Fire Department volunteers and ambulance personnel about their inability to get past a choke point on Edgemere Road, just south of the firehouse, caused by crowds at the Surf Lodge restaurant and bar.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell took time at a town board work session Tuesday to comment on the travails of the holiday weekend, making some explicit promises to step in. The long weekend was “somewhat unprecedented,” he said, with “a large volume of activity that the police responded to” — 464 calls for police assistance over the three days. By contrast, there were 256 police calls over the Memorial Day weekend, Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc reported.

Police issued 130 citations for such offenses as traffic infractions, driving while ability-impaired, and town code noncompliance, and made 16 arrests over the weekend, Mr. Cantwell reported.

“Some of the results from the weekend are troubling,” he said in a phone interview later Tuesday. Parking problems and traffic tie-ups were acute, he reported, particularly in Montauk. “The infrastructure there was simply never meant to accommodate the volume of people that we have there on a weekend such as the Fourth of July.”

With the holiday, along with its celebratory fireworks shows at Devon in Amagansett and on the Montauk beach, falling on a Saturday this year, the police, fire marshals, marine patrol, and ordinance enforcement officers were “under great stress,” the supervisor said. Noise complaints poured in, primarily prompted by Montauk hotspots, and police issued summonses to several establishments.

“I want to remind operators: your license is subject to revocation by the town board — and we will pursue that,” said Mr. Cantwell at the Tuesday meeting, in an announcement aimed at holders of town permits to sponsor live music shows. A hearing may be held and a license pulled after three noise violations are accrued.

“We are going to review the music licensing law,” perhaps tightening the rules or eliminating the licenses altogether, Mr. Cantwell elaborated after the meeting. “I honestly feel that in some cases the system is being abused, and I think the town board has a responsibility to respond to that.”

One “particular public safety issue” occurs on Edgemere Road, Mr. Cantwell said, where patrons of a bar he left unnamed “are walking out in the street at night to get to and fro, and it’s dangerous. Somebody is going to get injured, seriously injured, at that location.” As Edgemere is a county road, he spoke Tuesday afternoon to the office of the Suffolk County executive, and sent a letter to the county Department of Public Works, which could extend no-parking areas along there.

He had received an email with a photo, Mr. Cantwell said, that “appeared to show patrons at one of the locations in Montauk urinating in Fort Pond, which is extremely troubling.”

“I want to make a plea,” he said, to business owners, who “have a responsibility” to be good neighbors and to control what happens at their establishments. “The fact that that would happen at an establishment that has staff and security is part of the problem,” he said. “Businesses have a responsibility to control their clientele.”

Fire safety codes, including a maximum-occupancy limit, and county health department regulations addressing how many patrons can be accommodated with a certain number of bathrooms and the like will be brought to bear, the supervisor said. “We are going to look very carefully at this issue,” he promised, saying that the town would work with the county on enforcement.

On the matter of enforcement, he said the board “will authorize as we need to,” overtime for police and other law officers through the summer. He said he had already informed town department heads “to bring on staff to keep this community safe.”

“We have a responsibility to enforce the law and the codes of this town and we will do everything in our power to do so,” he concluded.

“We really feel that we have no voice, that no one’s listening,” said B.J. Wilson, who started the Montauk Locals group. “Montauk is so far out of control,” the 50-year resident of the hamlet said. “There’s no enforcement.”

“Everybody’s got a story,” he said, rattling off an anecdote about an ambulance, its lights on, speeding to a call but being stopped outside the Surf Lodge so that taxis ferrying bar patrons could access the road. “There’s a bar in the Memory [Motel] parking lot,” he said. “There’s police helping drunk people cross the road. The group rentals. The taxis.”

One evening recently after work, Mr. Wilson said, a group of locals having a beer outside the Dock restaurant called out to a visitor who had dropped his unwanted ice cream cone on the ground and walked on. When asked to pick it up, he just looked at them, Mr. Wilson said. “It could have gone real ugly right there. I know you can’t do anything about people’s general attitudes.” But, he said, the town must act in an official capacity to do what it can.

Acts of civil disobedience may be warranted to draw attention to the problem, Mr. Wilson said, “because look at what we’re going through. Nothing’s being done. It’s not one thing — it’s everything.”

“We’re going to meet and discuss our options,” he said. “If it goes to local justice rather than civil disobedience, it’s going to get ugly . . . the town administration allowed this drunken debauchery.”

In his ad, Mr. Duryea wrote that “the infrastructure of this summer destination is not designed for the numbers of people coming here, and the result is a rapid deterioration in the appearance and character of the community.” With speeding taxis, crowds, and litter, the “post-midnight scene” downtown, he said, is “like a page out of ‘Apocalypse Now.’ ”

Mr. Duryea also referenced recent events such as the blocked ambulance, an assault on a Montauk merchant by a taxi driver, and residents who awoke to find a drunken stranger passed out in their house.

He went on: “Is it little wonder that fewer and fewer families are coming to Montauk? Who would want to expose their child to some of the above?”

Montauk’s attributes, Mr. Duryea said — “open space, beautiful beaches, and some of the best fishing around” — “means nothing,” he wrote, “if we are merely known as the place where you can tie one on and walk around half naked.”

Both he and Mr. Wilson said that the invasion of weekend partyers is having a negative effect on Montauk’s larger tourist economy, based on second-home owners and family vacation visits. “What I would call ‘the money people’ are leaving,” Mr. Duryea said. “They are seeing the trend, and they are leaving.”

“Put a paddy wagon down on Main Street in Montauk for a couple of Saturday nights and see what happens,” he suggested yesterday. The city of New Orleans employs that tactic to tamp down public drunkenness during Mardi Gras, he said. “I never thought I would be saying these things. But I woke up Sunday so upset; I’m a native son. I’ve seen it all, but I’ve never seen it like this.”

In a letter to the editor published in this issue, T. Baker has a long list of “a few thoughts coming off the Fourth of July weekend.”

“Me first,” he writes. “Road rage. Loud obnoxious idiots. Litter. Barking dogs. ‘I don’t care about my neighbors as long as I have fun.’ ”

“The summer of 2015 has begun,” he concludes. “This town’s in trouble.”

“It shouldn’t get out of control to begin with,” Mr. Cantwell said late Tuesday. “I want to send a message to those that are going on the edge that we’re going to do everything we can, within our power, to rein this in.”

But, he cautioned, change will not be instantaneous, and there are limitations to what government can constrain. “This is not something that happened overnight,” he said. “It’s a situation that’s been building, maybe, to the crescendo that we saw this weekend.”

Related: After Hectic Fourth of July, Besieged Montauk Residents Ponder Solutions