MARINE PATROL: Chief Debriefs Board

The protocol is that the United States Coast Guard takes the lead, Ed Michels, the chief of the East Hampton Town Marine Patrol, told the town board on Tuesday about the rescue of a bayman on June 24.

"The Marine Patrol didn't do 'nothing'," said Mr. Michels. "We activated the system. You designate someone in charge, you do what they say to do."

Mr. Michels has been roundly criticized for the way he handled the incident, in which Charlie Niggles spent hours in high winds on a partially submerged boat in Gardiner's Bay before the Coast Guard picked him up at 4 a.m. the next day. Among his critics have been Brad Loewen, the president of the East Hampton Town Baymen's Association, who is also a Democratic candidate for town board, and several writers of letters to the editor in today's Star.

They say Mr. Michels should have launched a Marine Patrol boat to look for Mr. Niggles, who was reported overdue to the Marine Patrol at 12:17 a.m. The fisherman had left home to check his traps at about 7 p.m. and was expected back about two hours later.

Mr. Michels told the town board on Tuesday that he was following an established policy in which the Coast Guard, once it becomes involved in such a situation, takes the lead.

The Marine Patrol chief was called at home just before 1 a.m. and apprised of the situation by Sean Daly, one of two of his officers assigned to patrol the beaches that night. He immediately called the Coast Guard.

The Marine Patrol can undertake its own search for an overdue vessel, Mr. Michels said, but normally alerts the Coast Guard, instead, for a search-and-rescue operation. The Coast Guard's base in Moriches has search-and-rescue computers with maps and detailed weather data, and it can also call for airborne help, he explained.

"If there is a maritime distress - an overdue vessel, which that was - we are the on-scene manager," Lt. Jonas Yang of the Coast Guard Moriches Group said yesterday. "We have the entire picture, if you will, so we can search smartly."

However, Lieutenant Yang said, local agencies are free to decide for themselves how to respond to an emergency.

Nevertheless, Mr. Michels said yesterday, the marine units on Long Island have agreed to follow the Coast Guard's lead when multiple agencies are involved in an operation. Mr. Michels leads training sessions for marine officers across the Island.

"We are the professionals," said Senior Chief Petty Officer Nick Pupo of the Montauk Coast Guard station yesterday. "I don't see anything wrong with the action that was there. We are deferred to in a search-and-rescue operation on the water."

On the night of the Niggles incident, the Coast Guard had a 25-foot patrol boat that is based in Montauk within a mile of Gardiner's Island, with Joe Billotto, a State Department of Environmental Conservation police officer, on board. It was diverted to search for the fisherman at 1:06 a.m., according to a timeline Mr. Michels presented to the town board.

Marine Patrol was told to be ready to take over the search at 5 a.m. if the Coast Guard "didn't get results," Mr. Michels said. Meanwhile, Marine Patrol was directed, along with the East Hampton Town Police, to mount a search. It did so, using flares to light the East Hampton shoreline in the vicinity of Mr. Niggles's launching site at Folkstone Road.

Along with Mr. Niggles's son and his father-in-law, other officers reviewed the locations of his other traps and coordinated communication with the Coast Guard vessel.

"We didn't have a hard and specific area; we didn't know for quite a while which fish trap we were going to go to," Mr. Michels said Tuesday. The Coast Guard boat checked several traps near Gardiner's Island, he said.

Officers were sent with night-vision goggles to Sammy's Beach to see if Mr. Niggles was at the traps he keeps in that area. By 2:25 a.m., the Montauk Coast Guard station was making a "phone search," contacting marinas, boats, and others from Three Mile Harbor to Orient Point to see if anyone had seen the fisherman.

By 2:50 a.m., according to Mr. Michels's timeline, the Department of Environment had requested a helicopter from the Suffolk County Police Department and Coast Guard Moriches had requested one from the Cape Cod station of the Coast Guard. Personnel on Gardiner's Island were called at 2:55 a.m. and asked to check the beaches for Mr. Niggles.

The county helicopter took off from Islip at 3:15 a.m. and spotted Mr. Niggles at 4 a.m. He was picked up by the Coast Guard boat within minutes. The Coast Guard helicopter then en route to Gardiner's Island was sent back.

Town Supervisor Bill McGintee said Tuesday that Mr. Michels was asked to appear before the board "to dispel any misinformation that is out there, and so the board has the opportunity to understand these protocols and how not just Harbor Patrol but all emergency services organizations work on these protocols."

"If the Coast Guard hadn't been in the area, you would have been in the lead until the Coast Guard would come in and relieve you," Mr. McGintee said to Mr. Michels. "The Marine Patrol will go out at night if the Coast Guard is tied up."

Mr. Michels had already reviewed the incident at a debriefing on July 6 attended by Mr. McGintee's assistant, Lynn Ryan, Officer Daly, Officer Pupo of the Montauk Coast Guard station, Town Police Chief Todd Sarris, and Councilwomen Pat Mansir and Debra Foster.

"My opinion was that it was an excellent operation, especially since we had seven different units, eight counting the men from Gardiner's Island," Mr. Michels said Tuesday.

Supervisor McGintee, a former police officer, noted that he had "26 years in law enforcement."

"In support of what Ed says," he said, "one of the things you don't want to do in a coordinated search is over-respond. You don't want everybody running to the same spot."

Councilwoman Foster, however, wondered if would have been better to send a Marine Patrol boat out anyway. "I understand," she said, "but there was a large area to cover. As a family member, I would jump in a boat myself."

"There was a Coast Guard cutter within a mile of where they believed the subject might be," Mr. McGintee said. "If you can't find him there, you're much better off having your resources ready and waiting" to check other areas.

"As long as protocol was followed, the only thing you need to look at now is, do you need to change protocol, and was there a communication breakdown. And the only thing we could determine was, maybe we needed more information."