Police & Courts

The East Hampton Town police substation in Montauk received a call on the morning of June 10 reporting an erratic driver eastbound on Montauk Highway near South Eagle Street. Police found a white 2014 Mercedes-Benz traveling almost entirely on the eastbound shoulder of the highway, and pulled it over on South Edgemere Street.

Sag Harbor Village police counted a grand total of 27 vehicles broken into on Sunday night. The calls to police started coming in at 8 p.m., and the phone kept ringing, they said, until 2 a.m.

On the night of June 6, on Route 114 in East Hampton, town police stopped a black 2020 Land Rover driven by Jefferson Salazar, 35, of Miami, and wound up charging him with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. He appeared in East Hampton Town Justice Court yesterday and was released on his own recognizance.

Police leveled the same charge on Friday night against Roger Kassokro of the Bronx, 63, after stopping his 2016 white Ford van on Stephen Hand's Path. He was released in the field with a court date of July 1.

The governor signed into law a series of policing reforms this week as part of the Say Their Name agenda. South Fork police leaders said they were on track for compliance because many progressive policies and resources are already in place in their departments.

Gennaro Giugliana, 68, of Riverhead called East Hampton Town police on the morning of June 8 to report he had rear-ended another car at the Montauk Highway-Wainscott Northwest Road traffic light. His 2018 Volkswagen sport-utility vehicle ran into a 2015 Toyota pickup truck belonging to Juan Bremon-Baez, 54, of East Hampton, he reported.

Both drivers sustained injuries. Mr. Bremon-Baez had minor bleeding; Mr. Guigliana reported back pain. They both declined medical attention.

New measures will mandate tracking of race and ethnicity in all arrest data, and require "officers to report any weapons discharge within six hours" and to "provide mental and medical help for any person under arrest or any person in custody when they require it."

The governor's signature on the reforms means New York is among the first states in the country to take formal action in light of the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minneapolis by a white police officer on May 25.

A driver was charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle when, according to East Hampton Village police, his black BMW crossed the double yellow lines on Main Street, made an illegal U-turn there in front of 16 Main, and parked.

A Subaru station wagon that crashed through the front doors of the East Hampton Market on Race Lane on Friday afternoon, injuring two people, was being driven by a 91-year-old man, police said.

Black smoke was visible from as far away as Montauk late Sunday afternoon when the East Hampton Fire Department received word of a raging garage fire at 11 Robert’s Lane. The family in the house escaped safely and there were no injuries.

Officers were sitting in a marked East Hampton Town police car Saturday night on Ed Hults Lane near Old Stone Highway in Springs when, they said, a gray Toyota in the parking lot there “backed out of a parking spot recklessly,” nearly hitting their right rear quarter-panel, and then speeding away.

Reports of loud leaf blowers were flying all over last Thursday and the day before, ringing in East Hampton Village’s new lawn-care equipment noise law.

A driver avoided injury but badly damaged a section of the Cranberry Hole Road railroad bridge in Amagansett on Tuesday evening.

Suffolk County Sheriff Errol D. Toulon Jr. on Monday announced he intends to create a community advisory board to give residents a direct line of communication and representation to his department. Members will discuss relevant topics with the sheriff and provide input on initiatives and policies.

A car smashed through the front doors and into East Hampton Market on Race Lane in East Hampton Village on Friday afternoon. Several people were taken by ambulance to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital with minor injuries. No one was seriously hurt. 

Floyd’s murder on Memorial Day at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer as three other officers stood by was “an assault not just on Mr. Floyd and people of color, but on the equity and trust we work so hard as a department to develop,” Chief Michael Sarlo said.

Someone called police from the Egypt Beach parking lot on the afternoon of May 26 to complain about “an old man doing yoga and blocking access to the beach.”

Sag Harbor Village police had no trouble spotting Nicole Fader’s large camper van early on the morning of May 25 since it was parked illegally on Long Island Avenue.

The driver of a sport utility vehicle that crashed into Edouard Dejoux’s porch on Sunday afternoon told police that he had been drinking all day before the accident.

A gas station on North Main Street was the site of an altercation between an attendant and a customer on May 19, when the driver of a tan Honda Element was asked to move her car, as it was blocking traffic. In reply, she got out and hit the attendant in the face, he told police.

Charles Engstrom was leaving Montauk Beer and Soda on South Elmwood Avenue when he realized he had dropped his wallet. He went back inside and asked the owner, Olivia Malik, if she had seen it.

When a woman left her house on Stephen Hand’s Path the afternoon of May 6, she saw that the order of surgical masks she had been expecting had arrived in her mailbox. Three hours later when she returned the box of masks was gone.

Sag Harbor Village police spotted a blue Mercedes-Benz heading the wrong way on Washington Street, a one-way street, on the morning of May 6, and stopped the driver. Also in Sag Harbor that morning, police noticed a gray GMC Envoy with no license plates, either front or back.

On the afternoon on May 4, Irma Suarez-Leon of Amagansett was turning left from Three Mile Harbor Road onto Jackson Street in East Hampton when her Toyota sedan hit a Honda Accord at the intersection’s stop sign.

Fire broke out in one of the units at the Atlantic Bluffs co-op complex in Montauk on Saturday evening, heavily damaging a portion of the property. 

Town police were busy from April 27 through Monday evening checking on reports of construction that might or might not have been in compliance with Covid-19 restrictions.

In Sag Harbor on Friday, village police clocked a blue 2007 Honda Civic headed south down Main Street at 39 miles per hour, almost twice the posted 20-mile-an-hour limit.

East Hampton Village

A young seal was spotted at Georgica Beach on April 20 with a fishing line tightly wrapped around its neck and right flipper. The seal was stable, but in need of assistance. After receiving a photograph, the Marine Rescue Center in Riverhead sent out a team as fast as possible. 

A 2011 Chevrolet drove off Crystal Drive near Morrell Street and struck a brick barrier and tree, causing the car to overturn and hit a mailbox. The tree fell across the road, damaging a parked car on the opposite shoulder. 

Members of the East Hampton Fire Department and East Hampton Volunteer Ambulance Association rescued a tree climber who had sustained a severe head injury while working about 40 feet up in a tree on Oakview Highway in East Hampton on Saturday morning.