Police & Courts

A 44-year-old East Hampton man is facing a felony charge of first-degree criminal contempt for allegedly violating an order of protection stemming from an incident witnessed by a 14-year-old child.

An officer went to Sag Harbor's Windmill Beach Saturday afternoon to check on a man who’d been seen lying on the sand for some time. What with the great weather that day — the temperature was near 70 and the sun was strong — he’d fallen asleep, he said. He was fine.

On local roads in the last 10 days, a total of six people were taken to the hospital after car crashes in East Hampton and Montauk.

Hundreds of Montaukers and friends from nearby communities came together Monday afternoon — with friends calling friends calling friends, until the gazebo was nearly surrounded — to stand up against antisemitism, which reared its ugly head at dawn that day when swastikas and other hateful graffiti were discovered spray-painted in several places in the hamlet.

An East Hampton Town Police dispatcher confirmed Monday morning that officers are on scene in Montauk investigating multiple incidents of antisemitic hate-crime vandalism.

Shortly before 11 p.m. on Oct. 18, “a large brown bag containing an assortment of women’s clothes” was brought to police headquarters for safekeeping after being found in front of the Dragon Hemp Apothecary on Main Street in Sag Harbor.

Mark Ripolone, formerly of Montauk, took a plea deal Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court, admitting to stealing close to $400,000 from clients over three years.

On Friday around 3 p.m., a man walked out of the Sweet Spot, the new ice cream place on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village, without paying for his milkshake.

The East Hampton Town Police Department has given the all-clear signal at the Amagansett School after a bomb threat was received by email just before 9 a.m. Wednesday. The school — where the day's classes were just beginning — was immediately evacuated, police said in a release.

A 28-year-old Riverhead man was arrested in East Hampton on Sept. 30 and charged with two felony counts of criminal mischief in the second degree.

East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen was driving a 2009 Audi S.U.V. on the morning of Oct. 3, when it was rear-ended by a 2012 Subaru Forester driven by an 82-year-old East Hampton woman.

A landscaping company working on Bluff Point Road in Sag Harbor was told to turn off their leaf blowers on Monday morning, Columbus Day, not because there were no leaves on the ground yet but because leaf blowing is forbidden on holidays.

A federal jury convicted a Montauk fisherman on Wednesday of falsifying records in order to sell fluke and black sea bass in quantities that vastly exceeded legal limits. 

Five boaters were rescued from a 24-foot vessel named Gloria on Sept. 20, after the craft was seen taking on water about a mile off the coast in Gardiner’s Bay. Marine Patrol officers were able to tow the boat to the Gann Road launch, where it was removed from the water with some difficulty. The officers found no cause for citation.

A Queens man has been arrested on felony forgery charges after Suffolk County police said he used counterfeit $100 bills to buy merchandise at more than a dozen small businesses in the eastern part of the county. 

An iPad belonging to Blade helicopter service was reported missing from a desk in the lobby of East Hampton Airport on Sept. 16. Also at the airport, two days later, a pair of blue Beats wireless headphones went missing from the desk where the iPad had been charging. The same man was observed taking both items.

Capt. Jeff Erickson, who has been with the East Hampton Village police since he graduated from the police academy in 1991, was named acting chief of the department at Friday’s village board meeting.

On Saturday afternoon, Harbormaster Joseph Vish responded to a report of an unknown material — what looked to be either a pile of 10 “horse manure patties” or “granola cookies with hard candies pushed inside them,” according to the official report — in the parking lot of Sammy’s Beach. He cleaned up the mess.

A scuffle at Innersleeve Records in Amagansett on the afternoon of Sept. 10 left one man with “substantial pain, swelling, and bleeding” and landed another in court facing three criminal charges.

Town and county police are seeking the public’s help in finding three men who they say engaged in criminal mischief at Marshall and Sons Service Center on Sept. 2.

A 63-year-old homeless woman was arrested late Sunday afternoon after a standoff with police in which she barricaded herself into a house in the Pine Neck neighborhood in Noyac, Southampton Town police said Monday.

Labor Day weekend was “one of the busiest weekends we’ve ever had,” East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo told the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee on Saturday, with 17 arrests — including nine for driving while intoxicated — to go with 16 car accidents and 395 calls for help between Friday morning and Monday morning.

Just after 3 a.m. on Sept. 4, police ticketed three people for drinking in public at the Sportime facility on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett. Police called a cab for one of them, a Springs man who was also charged with public urination. The cabbie called back a short time later to report the man had left his wallet, cellphone, and other personal property in the cab.

In a final act before retiring on Aug. 30, Justice Paul Baisley Jr. of New York State Supreme Court, who has issued a series of rulings against East Hampton Town regarding both East Hampton Town Airport and a 4,000-foot stretch of Napeague oceanfront popularly known as Truck Beach, referred the attorney Daniel Rodgers to the Grievance Committee for the Tenth Judicial District for disciplinary consideration.

Last Thursday afternoon, for the second week in a row, police tracked down and arrested suspects in a shoplifting incident at a luxury boutique on Newtown Lane. First it happened at Balenciaga; this time it was at Prada.

A 50-year-old man was hit by a car and killed on Saturday night while crossing Montauk Highway just east of the Scuttlehole Road intersection.

Late Saturday afternoon, not long after the manager of the Balenciaga retail store on Newtown Lane called East Hampton Village police to report a shoplifting, a man fitting the manager’s description of the thief was spotted strolling down the street wearing the missing merchandise.

Officers were summoned on Aug. 23 at 4:34 a.m. to the Montauk 7-Eleven, where a man was seen and heard “screaming at a clerk” about sandwich prices. The man, who turned out to be homeless, was told to calm down.

A man who attempted to gain access last week to the stage at an Upper East Side event where the actress Drew Barrymore was being interviewed has been arrested by Southampton Town police on a misdemeanor charge of stalking.

After 40 years on the force, it’s not a single rewarding moment that stands out for East Hampton Village Police Chief Michael Tracey but rather “the little things. Maybe you pull someone over and they’re scared to death, their hands are shaking, and you can put them at ease. You have to be willing, and awake, and paying attention, to see the opportunity to make a difference.”