Police & Courts

Sag Harbor Village police have received several reports of “swatting” calls, falsely reporting an emergency, from Main Street businesses recently, three involving Sag Pizza and another, last week, involving Apple Bank.

Has a shocking crime that took place in East Hampton Village in 1955 finally been solved? Mayor Jerry Larsen believes it has, and he isn’t alone.

East Hampton Village’s new Flock license-plate reader cameras are having an immediate effect here. Out of 18 arrests reported by village police in the last two weeks, 14 were made with the assistance of the cameras.

A coyote was spotted in the vicinity of Hither Hills State Park in Montauk on the morning of April 7. The man who reported it said he was worried about the safety of neighborhood pets.

The Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps is hoping to broaden its membership by allowing Sag Harbor residents who are in college, or doing an equivalent educational program, to be eligible to volunteer.

A vial with 1.17 grams of a “white powdery substance” was allegedly found on the driver of a 2019 Cadillac Escalade on Sunday. A “multi-drug” test determined the substance to be cocaine, police said.

Ticketed for an open container Friday night on Springs-Fireplace Road, a man walked behind the squad car and began urinating on a tree in plain sight of the officer. When the officer approached him, the man shoved the ticket at him and ran away.

A driver who sustained an injury to his shoulder in an accident on the evening of April 2 was charged afterward with misdemeanor drunken driving.

There were two water rescues on Saturday, one involving a capsized kayak and the other a surfer in distress.

“People buy illegal temporary tags online, and they get away with it until police suspect something fishy about the plate, or until they’re stopped for an ordinary traffic infraction,” according to East Hampton Village Detective Sgt. Jennifer Dunn. That was the case last week, when a temporary tag led police to discover that the vehicle's registration was apparently fraudulent.

Someone said to be dressed in a Boy Scout uniform was spotted peering into the windows of a Wheelock Walk house on Friday. Police did not find the person.

The East Hampton Town Board approved a resolution Tuesday to fire Police Officer Andrea Kess, a move her attorney said was payback for her own complaints against the Police Department.

Two fires were reported in town last week, one in East Hampton and one in Springs. 

The Emergency Services Building was crowded with Blue at Friday’s East Hampton Village Board meeting, which featured Police Chief Jeff Erickson handing out awards and a promotion. Mayor Jerry Larsen also took part, handing out a new Top Cop award, which he said will be an annual event. 

Police and firefighters responded to Apaquogue Road following a call of a gas leak on the morning of March 18. They arrived to find a landscaper who told them he’d struck a gas line in the road while digging a hole.

A driver whose truck rear-ended a car in front of him told police he had been distracted by his dog and didn't notice that the car was braking.

Police at first thought that the water reported to be flowing onto Church Street last Thursday afternoon came from a water main break, but found upon arriving at the scene that it was being pumped from a nearby swimming pool, a violation of the village code.

As winds out of the northwest gusted at near 40 miles per hour early Saturday, it didn’t take long for the embers from a fire that began around 9:30 a.m. in a Manorville backyard, “following an attempt to make s’mores,” to ignite multiple brush fires that would grow to burn 600 acres in the Westhampton pine barrens. Suffolk County police arson detectives reached the conclusion after first reviewing 911 call from the hours leading up to the incident.

Low-flying drones were reported flying over Deep Hollow Ranch on the evening of March 3. Police saw their lights blinking red and white, but no action was taken. 

East Hampton Town police made fewer overall arrests last year, but more arrests for driving while intoxicated — another year that has led Chief Michael Sarlo to say that “we live in an extremely safe community.” 

A fire on Park Street in East Hampton early Saturday afternoon left extensive damage to a house and killed the family dog, East Hampton Fire Chief Duane Forrester said Monday. 

Brush fires in the Pine Barrens around Westhampton Beach that burned more than 600 acres were likely sparked by a fire that spread from a house in Manorville where people were making s'mores on Saturday afternoon, Suffolk County police said. Some 90 agencies responded, including fire departments from the South Fork.

A Sag Harbor man was riding a motorcycle on Route 27 near East Lake Drive in Montauk on the evening of Feb. 26 when, he told East Hampton Town police, a deer ran out into the road.

East Hampton Village is exploring creating its own justice court that could be up and running at the Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street by next January.

The East Hampton Town Police Department’s planning for security at the Montauk Friends of Erin St. Patrick’s Day Parade, to be held on March 30, begins early in the new year and continues until a week before the parade. But after the attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day that killed 14 people, there is an even greater focus on safety this year.

Warning that it could be a false alarm, a police dispatcher alerted officers on the evening of Feb. 25 that a caller had reported “a man with a possible bomb attached to his chest” on Main Street. Police found no such man nor any witnesses to the person described.

Police spotted a headlight out on a Chevy van, pulled the driver over, and said they found cocaine and fentanyl in the vehicle.

On Feb. 19, a Stuart’s Lane, East Hampton, woman reported two vehicles circling her neighborhood. Police found one vehicle parked on the shoulder. The driver explained that she was using the quiet street to teach her mother how to drive. The other vehicle was being used to practice parallel parking.

The clothing shop LoveShackFancy on Madison Street in Sag Harbor reported two separate thefts over the weekend. An arrest was made Thursday afternoon in connection with one of them.

A house under construction in Wainscott experienced heavy damage after a fire tore through it Friday morning.