Police & Courts

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Long Island Rail Road characterized the blaze as “small,” though it did cause a train to be canceled, and said it was “quickly extinguished and nobody was injured.”

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.”

At Si Si at East Hampton Point Sunday afternoon, an “extremely agitated and intoxicated” East Hampton man, 33, was yelling that his friends had stuck him with a bill of $855.41. Police called his mother, and she called in with a credit card. An officer drove him home, passing on a warning that he’s not permitted to return to the restaurant.

The East Hampton Town Board hired a neutral investigator to probe personnel matters within the Town Police Department in light of the scathing complaint filed in June by Officer Andrea M. Kess alleging she is a victim of gender-based discrimination and harassment in a hostile work environment.

Lifeguards were busy on East Hampton beaches in the last week, with rip currents and marine life matching up with heavy crowds. “We made 16 saves between Aug. 7 and Aug. 14,” said Drew Smith, the head lifeguard for East Hampton Village. “We’ve had an unusually busy summer.”