James William Thompson, a Sag Harbor resident who as a Suffolk County Police detective sergeant fought the drug war on Long Island in the 1970s and ’80s and was part of one of the largest drug seizures off the coast of East Hampton, died March 17 in The Villages, a retirement community in central Florida. He was 74, and had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mr. Thompson was instrumental in forming the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s Long Island Task Force in 1974, where he supervised Suffolk and Nassau detectives and D.E.A. agents. The task force landed one of the largest drug seizures and most significant drug arrests in the county’s history, his family said.

Under his leadership, the task force intercepted a Colombian trawler off the coast of East Hampton on Sept. 3, 1981. They uncovered 40,000 pounds of marijuana, which led to the arrest and conviction of six organized crime leaders, six Colombian nationals, and an additional 21 defendants. 

Mr. Thompson was also known for arresting the president of the Pagans, an outlaw motorcycle gang, in 1978, which led to the seizure of millions of dollars of amphetamines and an arsenal of weapons. In 1979, his team took five kilograms of heroin off the streets in a Ronkonkoma bust, resulting in the arrest of five Mexican nationals.

This level of narcotics enforcement did not come without risk, his family said. The task force came under gunfire more than once. Once while executing a search warrant in Brooklyn, two officers were shot. They made a full recovery, but it had a profound impact on him. He cared about his officers and about getting the job done, and “always did the right thing,” the family said. “He left this world a better place than he found it.”

James Thompson, better known as Jim, was born in the Bronx on Aug. 17, 1941, to Marguerite Kinnard Thompson and Joseph Thompson. The family moved to Lindenhurst in 1959, where he met his wife of 53 years, the former Eleanor Timko. After graduating from Lindenhurst High School in 1960, he served in the Army National Guard.

On April 15, 1963, he joined the Suffolk County Police Department, starting in the First Precinct and quickly becoming an undercover narcotics investigator. He was promoted to sergeant in 1970, and just one year later was made a detective sergeant in the narcotics division.

  After he retired in 1984, the family moved to Sag Harbor, where they opened a family restaurant in Noyac called Jim’s Anchorage. He sold it around 1990, and went on to establish a successful private investigation business. He also worked as the supervising investigator for the New York State Insurance Fraud Agency.

He was a member of the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps and a board member of St. Andrew’s School in Sag Harbor.

His greatest pride was his family, including his children, grandchildren, nephews, and extended family. “He enjoyed nothing more than pulling up his fish onto his boat with friends or taking a family picnic on his boat out into the middle of Noyac Bay,” his family said.

Mr. Thompson is survived by his wife and two daughters, June Ellen Haynal of Sag Harbor and Susan Marie Peterson of East Hampton. A son, James W. Thompson Jr., predeceased him, as did three brothers, Joseph, John, and Edward Thompson. A sister, Marie Shabatt of Lewiston, Pa., and a sister-in-law, Jean Thompson of West Babylon, also survive. He leaves four grandchildren and many nephews, nieces, and their children.

Visiting hours will be held tomorrow at the Yardley and Pino Funeral Home in Sag Harbor from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m.  There will be a funeral Mass at St. Andrew’s Catholic Church, of which he was a member, at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, with burial to follow at St. Andrew’s cemetery.

Memorial donations may be made to the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps, P.O. Box 2725, Sag Harbor 11963. 

Correction: A funeral service for James W. Thompson is at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, not 8:30 a.m., as initially reported. 

If the Sloppy Tuna in downtown Montauk opens this season, it will do so without the man who was its head of security for the past five years. “I will be back in Montauk this season, but not there,” Robert Anderson said outside  East Hampton Town Justice Court on Monday after pleading guilty to 4 of the 12 noise violations he had been written up for between 2014 and 2015.

East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky fined Mr. Anderson a total of $7,500. “I’m not blaming anybody,” Mr. Anderson said of his former bosses, Drew Doscher and Michael Meyer, who are tangled in counter lawsuits. Mr. Anderson said he was in negotiations with another high-profile Montauk nightclub.

Meanwhile, the court-appointed receiver for Sloppy Tuna, Charles C. Russo, vowed last week in letters to the two warring partners that the club and bar will open on time and have a successful season.

The letter came in response to a March 29 Facebook post by Mr. Doscher on the Sloppy Tuna Facebook page informing the “Sloppy nation” that the hot spot as they know it “will not be opening at the same location in Montauk this summer.” Mr. Doscher railed against an order by New York State Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo that would place the club under temporary control of Mr. Russo.

In his letter to the attorneys the next day, Mr. Russo demanded that Mr. Doscher turn over by Friday the more than $1 million the business has in a Chase Bank account to a receivership account Mr. Russo has created at Bridgehampton National Bank. He claimed that Mr. Doscher’s Facebook posting was in direct violation of the court order, which stipulated that Mr. Doscher is “restrained from interfering in any way” with the receiver’s operation of the business.

Mr. Russo, who also filed the letter with the clerk for Justice Garguilo, demanded that Mr. Doscher remove the posting and substitute a retraction instead. He also asked that Mr. Doscher be instructed to contact all news outlets to alert them to the retraction.

Mr. Russo warned that if Mr. Doscher does not comply with his demands, he risks facing criminal charges of contempt of court.

The warring parties were due back in court yesterday.

Greystone Development, a Manhattan real estate company that owns waterfront parcels that the Village of Sag Harbor would like to see become a park, reported on Monday that it had closed on Friday on an additional waterfront lot, 2 West Water Street, for $4.94 million.

Greystone owns neighboring properties at 1, 3, and 5 Ferry Road and has plans for 11 condos in two separate buildings on the combined properties, eight on Ferry Road and three on West Water Street. The parcel purchased Friday is known as the 1-800-LAWYERS property, after its owner, Bruce Davis.

Greystone has a site plan application before the Sag Harbor Planning Board and a wetlands application before the harbor committee for the condominium project. It is uncertain how much of the big white building on West Water Street would remain. The building had, at one point, been broken up into condominiums, but Tom Preiato, the village building inspector, said on Tuesday that Mr. Davis had been granted a permit to return it to a single-family residence, though the work may not have been completed.

“We remain deeply committed to the completion of this project and are looking forward to creating a beautiful addition to the waterfront landscape in Sag Harbor,” Jeffrey Simpson, the head of Greystone Development, said in a statement. “We have assembled an incredible team to bring this development to life and are thrilled with the projected outcome for our first Hamptons project.”

Overall, the 30,000-square-foot project calls for a “staggered row” of single-family houses “evoking a typical early 19th-century whaling village street­scape,” in New England shingle style, with clapboard and cedar shingles, Greystone said. If approved, the condos would offer water views with porches, roof-deck plunge pools, and individual garages. A new dock and 11 boat slips are also planned, and Greystone said it would allow public access to a landscaped park.

However, village officials would rather see only a public waterfront park on the combined parcels, totaling about two acres. In early March, the board unveiled conceptual drawings from Edmund D. Hollander, a top landscape architect and village homeowner.

They include two sandy beaches, a fishing and boat pier, a pedestrian walkway under the Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter Veterans Memorial Bridge that would connect to Windmill Park on the other side of the bridge, public restrooms, and trails celebrating the ecology and history of the village, among other amenities. It would be named the John Steinbeck Memorial Park in honor of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and longtime resident.

The village board sent a letter to the Town of Southampton last month requesting that the 1-800-LAWYERS property be added to the town’s community preservation list, according to Mayor Sandra Schroeder. A hearing would have to be held to add the property to the list. The town had placed the Ferry Road properties on the C.P.F. list at the village’s request in October. However, Greystone made it clear at the time it was not a willing seller.

The East Hampton Town Trustees gave formal support on Monday to a state bill that would grant the Village of Sag Harbor authority over waterways beyond the present 1,500-foot boundary, expanding its jurisdictional reach into areas that fall within East Hampton Town.

The bill, introduced in the State Legislature by Fred W. Thiele Jr., who is the Sag Harbor Village attorney as well as an assemblyman, passed the Senate but has not been voted on in the Assembly. Its intent is to regulate moorings and anchored vessels in the area outside the Sag Harbor breakwater, which can number as many as 70 in summer.

Such vessels have caused havoc, with some sinking and washing up on the breakwater or Havens Beach and spilling debris, fuel, or other contaminants. Many of the boats outside the Sag Harbor harbormaster’s jurisdiction are also improperly discharging sewage, John Parker of the village’s waterways advisory committee, said.

A joint committee comprising Mr. Parker, John Shaka, chairman of the village’s Harbor Committee, a number of East Hampton trustees, and Richard Whalen, the trustees’ attorney, came up with wording to be inserted in the bill asserting the trustees’ continued ownership of waterways and bottomlands within the town’s boundaries while granting expanded jurisdiction to the village.

Mr. Parker said on Monday that while language in the bill may still be altered, “the principles here are more important than the exact language.” The bill asserts that the trustees can offer advice on management of the area and stipulates that the joint committee can offer additional concerns and recommendations.

Mr. Whalen told the trustees that the language to be inserted includes an assertion of present and future ownership of the lands to which the bill would apply, and that “any regulations that the Village of Sag Harbor implements under this act would be uniform between the residents of the Village of Sag Harbor and the Town of East Hampton.”

He recommended that the trustees discuss the bill with Mr. Thiele or State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, a co-sponsor, and ask that they be notified of any changes as well as its progress in the Assembly. “This language is fine from our point of view, but it can be changed,” Mr. Whalen said. “If it is changed, we’d like to know if they took out the things we’re interested in.”

The seven trustees at the meeting voted unanimously to support the village’s expanded jurisdiction. “I think this is a win-win for the trustees and Sag Harbor,” Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, said as he commended the joint committee for its efforts. 

The trustees also voted, over the objection of one of the members, Tim Bock, to support the East Hampton Town Board’s recent action making what had been a seasonal ban on alcoholic beverages at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett permanent. A majority of the panel’s nine trustees had already decided to support a permanent ban prior to the town board’s formal resolution on March 3. It is in effect on weekends and holidays during lifeguard-protected hours from the Saturday before Memorial Day through Sept. 30.  

“The word that keeps coming up — permanent — sounds like it’s forever,” Pat Mansir told her colleagues. “But this means it doesn’t have to be brought up every year.” 

“If you’re turning it over to the town board, it will be permanent,” Mr. Bock said angrily. “It’s our beach. I’ll support what it was last year, but not permanent. . . . I think they should come back to us. It’s our jurisdiction.” His was a minority opinion, as the board voted 6-to-1 to support the town’s decision.

Also at the meeting, Tyler Armstrong, a trustee, said that Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University, who conducts annual water-quality monitoring for the trustees, will present his 2015 findings at Town Hall on April 18 at 6 p.m. The trustees voted on March 14 to renew their contract with Dr. Gobler and appropriate approximately $39,000 for this year’s program.

An artist with a studio on Plank Road, East Hampton, called East Hampton Town police there shortly before midnight on Saturday, leading to the arrest of a Bayport woman on multiple charges including the theft of his debit cards.

According to police, the woman introduced herself as Kayla McKean to Yong Jo Ji when they met last Thursday morning in a diner in Holtsville. “I was on the way to some meetings I had in New York City,” Mr. Ji stated in his signed complaint, and had stopped off for a quick breakfast. “I met a young woman who seemed down on her luck.” She was an orphan, she told him.

He needed someone to photograph his artwork, he said, and offered her the job. Taking her cellphone number, Mr. Ji, whose home is in Manorville, told her he would pick her up on his way back to the East End, and did so, stopping at a Central Islip address.

They drove straight from there to his East Hampton studio, he said, and he gave her a room to sleep in.

The next morning, they began working on his project, Mr. Ji said in his statement, but it quickly became apparent that she did not know how to use a computer. The artist told the woman the arrangement wasn’t working out, and “offered her cab fare or whatever” to take her home. She became distraught, he said, and he decided instead to leave her at a house he knew in East Hampton, which was not otherwise identified.

He did not see her for the next 36 hours, until he walked into his studio late Saturday night. There, he told police, he found her passed out in an armchair with one of his debit cards in her hand. He woke her up and told her he was calling 911. She went into the next room, Mr. Ji said, “and jumped out the bathroom window while I was on the phone with the police.”

He ran into the bathroom and found the medicine cabinet open. Several of his prescription drugs were missing, he stated.

Police found the woman hiding in nearby bushes. Initially, she was charged with felony grand larceny in connection with the debit card. At headquarters in Wainscott, at 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, police searched her bag and found three containers of controlled drugs including Alprazolam; amphetamines, and several small waxed paper bags of heroin, leading to three misdemeanor drug-possession charges. They also found a second debit card of Mr. Ji’s and nine hypodermic needles.

Charged with two felonies and four misdemeanors, the woman was arraigned before East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky. After police identified her by her real name, Kayla A. Murray, Justice Tekulsky asked where she lived. She gave a Bayview Avenue address in Bayport, saying she had lived there her entire life. An online telephone book lists a Kayla McKean at that address.

Justice Tekulsky told her that the district attorney’s office had asked him to set bail at $20,000. “You have a number of misdemeanor convictions, including one conviction for criminal contempt,” he noted.

He set bail at $5,000. “I don’t have that, your honor,” she said. “I don’t have any way to post bail.” She told an officer she felt faint and was given a chair, as Justice Tekulsky read to her details of a stay-away order of protection he was issuing for Mr. Ji.

Ms. Murray, 26, was being held in the county jail as of yesterday morning. She is due to be returned to the courthouse today, where she will meet a lawyer from the Legal Aid Society, Brian Francese. The society provides lawyers on weekdays for indigent defendants, but not on weekends, when the justice court is at its busiest.

If there is no grand jury indictment against her she will be released tomorrow without bail.

As schools across the state anticipate third through eighth grade testing in English language arts and math to begin next week, a survey of school districts between Bridgehampton and Montauk this week showed fewer children seem to be opting out this year.

A statewide Gallup poll had reported 240,000 students refused to take the tests last year, with hundreds of East End students among them. The English language arts tests begin Tuesday and run for three days. The math tests are the following week.

Last year, many parents had asked their children to opt out as they advocated for fairer and shorter tests and said the tests created too much anxiety among children because they were often too tough for the grade levels given in.

A number of teachers’ unions also supported opting out in order to send a message to lawmakers that the high-stakes standardized tests were unfair to teachers. In particular, they objected to a law that was to tie 50-percent of students’ test scores to teachers’ job reviews.

In a March 17 letter, Eric Casale, the Springs School principal, told parents there had been more teacher involvement in the tests this year, that the tests will have fewer questions, and that students will be allowed as much time as they need to finish them. He reported that 10 students in grades three through eight, out of some 465, have said they would not take the tests. Last year, Springs saw 79 students opt out of 465 students.

“I am confident these changes will assist our children to not only better demonstrate what they know, but also alleviate anxiety,” Mr. Casale wrote.

Katy Graves, the Sag Harbor District superintendent, reported Tuesday that 26 out of 481 students had recently handed in opt-out letters. She said 146 out of 490 students had opted out of the English language tests at about this time last year.

“Parents may feel they are beginning to be heard by our new commissioner of education,” Ms. Graves said in an email.

Bridgehampton is also seeing far fewer students opting out this year, with only 3 out of 80 students refusing to take the English test next week. Last year, it was 15 out of 67 students. “I meet with each grade taking the test to encourage them to do their best, and to know that we know they are ready,” Lois Favre, Bridgehampton’s superintendent, said in an email. “Other than that, we handle any specific students’ displaying anxiety, et cetera, on a case by case basis, but seemingly rare.”

Jack Perna, superintendent of the Montauk School, said only 2 out of 212 students have submitted refusal letters, while last year, it was 36 out of 208 students. In Amagansett, Eleanor Tritt, the superintendent, reported no students have opted out, at least so far. Last year, Amagansett had 2 out of 63 students.

 Ms. Tritt said Amagansett teachers “try to downplay it so that the kids are not unnecessarily producing anxiety and take it as part of a regular routine. We feel that it’s really good for the children to have the opportunity to take standardized tests so that by the time they get to the middle school and the high school they have been used to the experience, so it’s not the first time when they take high-stakes tests in the future.”

Wainscott School had not heard of any students opting out this year and does not anticipate any by Tuesday, according to its superintendent, Stuart Rachlin. Alan Van Cott, the Sagaponack School superintendent, declined to answer the question about testing, saying the school’s third-grade is so small providing such information might compromise students’ identity.

In East Hampton, Richard Burns, the superintendent, said Tuesday that the district has just four students out of 658 opting out of the English tests. But, he thought it was premature to discuss the numbers because more letters may come in before Tuesday. Last year, 64 East Hampton students opted out of English tests out of 669.

 Meanwhile, at a forum on Monday at the Southampton Cultural Center, members of three teachers’ unions — the Teachers Association of Sag Harbor, the Southampton Teachers Association, and the Westhampton Beach Teachers Association — had a lot to say about what they call disturbing trends facing public education. Not only high-stakes testing, but also privatization of public resources, political involvement, and a loss of local control were cited.   The forum was intended to spread the unions’ concerns among other teachers and the community at large, and the conversation Monday seemed to resonate among the more than 40 people in the audience.

“Opting out is not something I personally enjoy endorsing. . . . These tests need to change, and opting out of Pearson tests to me is a no-brainer,” Jim Kinnier, president of the Teachers Association of Sag Harbor, said at the forum. “It says to the state, ‘Now finish the job and make significant changes that benefit our students.’ ”

Although the Board of Regents, which sets state education policy, recently enacted a moratorium on that law, English and math scores are still being used to evaluate teachers who don’t teach those subjects. And, teachers object to the fact that private companies, specifically Pearson, are still creating the tests.

At the end of the program, the presidents of the participating unions handed out letters they suggested should be sent to state officials, including Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., and Roger Tilles, the New York State regent representing Long Island.

The letter to Mr. Tilles asked for changes in the tests, while the letters to Assemblyman Thiele and Senator LaValle asked for the repeal of the law that ties 50-percent of teachers’ job evaluations to test scores. Many in the audience immediately signed the letters and handed them back.

Mark Naison has two secrets to his productivity: grazing and napping. “I’m a great believer in napping and eating several times throughout the day,” said Mr. Naison, who turns 70 in May.

A professor of history and African-American studies at Fordham University in the Bronx, Mr. Naison and his wife, Liz Phillips, the principal of P.S. 321 in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, divide their time between a three-bedroom house in Springs and half of a brownstone in Park Slope.

Most days, Mr. Maison dozes for two hours, often in separate catnaps. Once on the South Fork, he likes to nap in his car. Last Thursday, for instance, he logged three naps at three different places — Louse Point, Gerard Drive, and Indian Wells Beach. With his seat reclined back, the windows rolled down, and a gentle cross breeze, he said he nodded off instantly.

With a two-day teaching schedule, Mr. Naison often lands in Springs late Tuesday night, with two solid days of writing before driving back to the Bronx at 3:30 a.m. Friday morning. After a 45-minute catnap in the garage, he arrives at his office by 7 a.m., refreshed and ready to take on the day.

“It gives me two whole days where I can write. I’ve written as many books in the last 10 years as I did in the 30 years before that,” said Mr. Naison, who writes at a computer desk adjacent to the kitchen. “This is the world’s best place to write. Nobody can find me. I just need quiet space and lots of food. I don’t smoke, but I drink lots of coffee and eat anything I can find.”

His routine seems to be working. A seventh book, “Before the Fires: An Oral History of African-American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s,” published by Fordham University Press, comes out in September. Robert Gumbs, a visual artist and graphic designer, is the co-author.

Twenty years ago, the couple, along with their two children, first visited the South Fork in search of an “ideal sports vacation.” Twelve years ago, they bought their house in Springs. Despite two hip replacements, a torn meniscus, and an injured Achilles tendon, Mr. Naison is a dedicated golfer, who frequents the Montauk Downs course. “It’s my all-time favorite golf course, one of the best affordable public courses in the entire country.”

When not golfing, Mr. Naison can be found at East Hampton In door Tennis, where he plays tennis to exhaustion. On summer days, however, when school is no longer in session, he can pass a whole afternoon lying in a hammock or watching sports on television. Meanwhile, he said his wife is perfectly content to spend six hours at the beach, accompanied only by a book.

Whether playing sports or writing, Mr. Naison operates at one of two speeds: “A hundred miles per hour — or zero,” he said. “I focus on things with high levels of concentration, and I feel no pain. I’ll play hurt.” 

The only child of two schoolteachers, Mr. Naison grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He skipped the third and seventh grades, graduating from high school two years early. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood, Mr. Naison adopted a half-nerd, half-thug identity. Competitive sports, whether basketball, baseball, football, or tennis, became the through line from which he said he redeemed his socially awkward self.

At 16, he enrolled at Columbia University, where he studied American history and became the captain of the men’s tennis team. His parents threatened to send him to Brooklyn College if he ever earned less than a B.

After his freshman year, Mr. Naison grew interested in the civil rights movement, realizing that while he had grown up around black kids, they had never talked about race. With a goatee and his hair long, he said he began to acquire a certain edge — and the newfound admiration of attractive-looking women. “Never change a winning formula,” said Mr. Naison, who still sports a goatee. “I’m never going to shave this sucker off.”

Around that time, he also started making trips to East Harlem to tutor students and help with tenant organizing. “What I saw was all these people working hard to keep heads above water, but there were these overwhelming forces keeping them down,” he said. “It changed me. It made me feel that I could use my skills and talents to help other people who didn’t have the same advantages. I found a larger purpose.”

In the spring of his senior year, Mr. Naison  started dating a black woman who attended City College of New York. Although their relationship lasted for six years, his parents disapproved and never acknowledged her existence. With two fellowships and a taste of financial freedom, he enrolled in a doctoral program in American history at Columbia, where his dissertation explored the Communist Party in Harlem. As a member of Students for a Democratic Society and frequent organizer of sit-ins (and later under F.B.I. surveillance), his days were spent participating in left-wing causes.

In 1970, needing to find a job, he sent out applications to every history program in the New York metropolitan area. Fordham’s Institute for African-American Studies called him in for an interview, quickly hiring him as its first white academic in an all-black department. The campus, largely comprised of commuter students, many of whom are first-generation college students, was a natural fit. He’s been there ever since.

By 1972 and newly single, Mr. Naison said he first eyed Ms. Phillips while giving a guest lecture at the New School on underground resistance. The couple married in 1974 at City Hall, accompanied by a 10-piece funk jazz band from Fordham — he in an orange blazer and floral-printed shirt and she in a see-through chiffon dress.

“We have a lot of fun together. I’m somewhat flamboyant and a little out there,” he said. “She’s extremely efficient and organized.” Their children, Sara Naison-Tarajano, 39, and Eric Naison-Phillips, 34, attended Yale University and now work in finance. A 12-year-old granddaughter, Avery, who recently placed fourth in the country in the 800-meter dash, may prove, he said, the most talented athlete in the family.

In recent years, Mr. Naison’s racial activism has spread to education. While working on a Bronx-based oral history project, he discovered what he saw as teachers being demonized for low test scores and schools being used as scapegoats for racial and economic inequality.

He said he was frustrated by the federal Race to the Top and Common Core, and by the general proliferation of test preparation. In 2013, he helped form the Badass Teachers Association, a national Facebook group of teachers unified by opposition to testing. Though no longer affiliated with the group officially, he remains staunchly opposed to testing and believes that “middle-class parents should opt out in solidarity of poorer districts. I hate grit. Rigor and grit is child abuse. Let them have fun. Let them play, and dream, and run around.”

A prodigious participant in social media, Mr. Naison posts updates to his 5,000 Facebook friends (the networking site’s limit) 20 to 30 times each day and has tweeted more than 20,000 times to his 4,100 Twitter followers. A dozen times throughout a two-hour interview, his computer pinged with Facebook updates.

“Since I don’t sleep in huge bursts, I can do this between my naps,” said Mr. Naison, who averages five hours of sleep each night.

Whether talking about his next book project or his marriage of 42 years, Mr. Naison projects a quality of unflappable optimism. Above all, he possesses the rare quality of a man deeply content with his life.

“I love my job. Everyone at my age at Fordham is retiring,” he said. “As long as kids sign up for my courses and I’m having fun, I’ll go on until I need a brain transplant.”

The Zika virus, spread primarily through the bite of an infected mosquito, was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization last month, nine months after the Pan American Health Organization issued an alert regarding the first confirmed infection in Brazil. Though symptoms of Zika in an infected person are usually mild, the virus can be spread from a pregnant woman to her fetus and has been linked to microcephaly, a serious birth defect of the brain. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that pregnant women should not travel to areas with Zika.

The virus can also be spread from mother to child if she is infected around the time she gives birth. An infected man can spread Zika to his sex partners, and it can also be spread through blood transfusions.

To date, no vector-borne Zika infections have been acquired in the United States, according to the C.D.C., but 273 travel-associated cases had been reported as of March 23. The virus, according to the C.D.C., is likely to continue spreading to new areas.

While Zika has fostered public concern, its appearance is unlikely to significantly alter the vector-control efforts of the Suffolk County Department of Public Works, which have been aimed at mosquito species that carry the West Nile and Eastern equine encephalitis viruses. Beginning in early May, the county conducts aerial application of the larvicide methoprene over marshlands to control those insects, while one of the likely vectors for Zika, Aedes albopictus, or the Asian tiger mosquito, “tends to live around the household,” said Dominick Ninivaggi, the vector control division’s superintendent.

The Asian tiger mosquito, he said on Tuesday, “breeds in containers in nature, like tree holes, and things like a little bucket, a birdbath, those little habitats. It’s not the mosquito you find in a swamp or marsh.” The suburban areas typical of western Suffolk County are more likely to see the Asian tiger mosquito than the South Fork, Mr. Ninivaggi said. Aedes aegypti, known as the yellow fever mosquito, is another species that is believed to carry Zika.

The county sprays marshlands with methoprene, but to control Zika-carrying mosquitoes, “it would be a matter of delivering it to the sites,” Mr. Ninivaggi said. “There has been some work done using fogging-type methods and others to reach backyards, but this is probably pretty unlikely for us.”

Instead, he said, it is incumbent on property owners to be proactive, particularly to prevent and eliminate standing water. “We can’t go into everybody’s backyard and treat it, turn over the birdbath. A lot of this will be education and outreach, having people take precautions, using repellants.” Control of the Asian tiger mosquito is difficult, he said, “and very annoying, because it can bite in the daytime and be very aggressive.”

On March 17, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced an action plan to combat transmission of Zika in the state. This includes distribution of larvicide tablets to residents in potentially affected areas.

That the Asian tiger and yellow fever mosquitoes’ habitat differs from that of West Nile-carrying mosquitoes is little comfort to activists and officials opposed to the county’s use of methoprene, which they say is harmful to nontarget species including lobsters and crabs.

Kevin McAllister of Defend H2O has long been a vocal critic of the county’s aerial application of methoprene and the adulticide resmethrin. In January, he and Tyler Armstrong of the East Hampton Town Trustees asked State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle to co-sponsor Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.’s bill that would ban use of methoprene in any fish habitat in any municipality adjoining Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean, along with their connecting bodies of water, bays, harbors, shallows, and marshes. Days later, Mr. LaValle introduced a Senate counterpart to Mr. Thiele’s bill.

“It’s unfortunate,” Mr. McAllister said. “When I heard about Zika, and then when it got a foothold in the States, I thought, ‘Here we go again,’ after feeling there had been some progress to ratchet down methoprene. I can see elected officials getting gun-shy about trying to champion its removal when there is a potential threat of Zika. It’s taken years to get where we are, where there’s at least some opposition to it.”

The county’s vector control division, Mr. Ninivaggi said, will be on the lookout for Zika and prepare a contingency plan. “The most likely place we would see it would be in returning travelers,” he said, but “that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to go anywhere,” as a mosquito would have to bite an infected person and incubate the virus in order to spread it.

“The issue with the birth defects has certainly gotten people’s attention,” Mr. Ninivaggi said. “Prior to discovery that the virus causes that — we’re pretty sure of that at this point — it was looked at as a mild disease. There wasn’t a high level of concern until the situation in South America turned ugly.”

When Steve Chassman asked who in the audience knew someone who was addicted to drugs or alcohol, a wave of sobering reality seemed to wash over the crowd of more than 150 people who were gathered at East Hampton High School for a community forum on the prevention of drug abuse.

Almost everyone’s hand went up.

“All of us, collectively, are in the midst of a health epidemic at a rate we’ve never before seen,” said Mr. Chassman, the executive director of LICADD, the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. “If you hear a sense of urgency in my voice, I’ve been a social worker for 23 years, and I’ve never seen it like this.”

High school officials convened the March 23 forum after noticing an uptick this year in drug-related incidents. According to Mr. Chassman’s organization, East Hampton is hardly the only community facing issues of addiction.

In Nassau County, according to LICADD, deaths from drug overdose increased from 24 in 2004 to 58 in 2015. In Suffolk County over the same time period, overdose fatalities shot up from 32 to 103. This February alone, about 1,400 Long Islanders came to LICADD for assistance.

“The world has changed, and so have the drugs. If you want insight into the human condition, it’s not what folks use. It’s why,” Mr. Chassman said, outlining a long list of reasons including peer pressure, anxiety, relaxation, curiosity, social acceptance, depression, escapism, and genetic predisposition. Addiction, he said, affects young people disproportionately because of many of those factors, with children as young as 11 trying “gateway” drugs — alcohol, marijuana, nicotine — and moving on to more dangerous substances by the age of 15 or 16.

“This is a tumultuous time in adolescence,” Mr. Chassman said. “At the height of the digital and technological revolution, we have to teach healthy coping skills to offset the world moving at a pace that has increased exponentially, when our young people have turned to substance abuse more than ever.”

Those skills, he said, might include such pursuits as exercise, athletics, and self-expression, through art, music, journaling, or other creative outlets.

Stephanie Sloan, a senior drug abuse educator with the Suffolk County Division of Community Mental Hygiene, broke down numerous warning signs that might alert parents if their child is using drugs. They include changes in weight, mood swings, letting go of personal grooming habits, unusual smells, nosebleeds, slurred or incoherent speech, changes in relationships, seizures with no previous history of having them, loss of interest in hobbies, loss of motivation, paranoia and anxiety, decreasing academic performance, discipline issues at school, and becoming silent or withdrawn.

“Some of these are going to be normal in adolescents, but they’re going to happen very quickly or you’re going to notice quite a few of them happening at the same time,” Ms. Sloan said. “Trust your gut. If you have a gut feeling that something is going on, something is going on.”

She also urged parents to make sure they have their children’s passwords to their computers, social media accounts, and cellphones. “They have no right to privacy. Ask for their passwords,” Ms. Sloan said. “If they don’t want to give it to you, there’s a reason. It’s important, because at the end of the day, it could end up saving their life.”

At the forum, nearly every adult over the age of 18 received training in the use of naloxone, often called Narcan, a drug that reverses or blocks the effects of an opioid overdose. Those who registered with the county were able to take home a naloxone kit in case of emergency.

The forum brought together not just LICADD and Suffolk County Emergency Medical Services, but also the Family Service League, Human Understanding and Growth Services, the East Hampton Town Human Services Department, Phoenix House, Narcotics Anonymous, the Seafield Center, and Families in Support of Treatment to offer resources and information.

Operation Big Red Med Disposal was also represented. Tom McAbee, who created the Big Red Med disposal box for unwanted medications, said the campaign has collected more than a ton of discarded medications on the East End. The box can be found at local pharmacies including, he said, White’s Apothecary in East Hampton, the Sag Harbor Pharmacy, and the Shelter Island Pharmacy.

“Our mission is twofold. It is to keep prescriptions out of our water and prevent prescription drug abuse,” Mr. McAbee, a retired banker whose wife is a physician at Southampton Hospital, said. “The more we can promote responsibly disposing of medications, the more benefit the community is going to have. Most people don’t know.”

Few people at the forum were willing to speak afterward about its impact, but at least one parent said its message was extremely important.

“You could really ask questions about what we as parents are doing wrong,” Roslen Tavera, a mother of two, said. Particularly notable, she said, was the message that children aren’t as much entitled to privacy as parents may think when it comes to passwords. “It’s good to know we can demand more from them. It’s our house, our rules,” Ms. Tavera said.

The controversial beachfront bar in downtown Montauk, Sloppy Tuna, will open on schedule this season, the court-appointed receiver for the business promised Wednesday. "I have every intention of making sure the restaurant opens on time and has a successful season," Charles C. Russo wrote in a scathing letter to the attorneys involved in the cross lawsuits between the two warring partners in the business, Michael Meyer and Drew Doscher.

The letter was directly triggered by a posting of Mr. Doscher's on the Sloppy Tuna Facebook page on Tuesday night that informed the "Sloppy nation" that the hot spot as they know it "will not be opening at the same location in Montauk this summer" and railing against an order by New York State Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo that would place the club under temporary control of Mr. Russo.

On Wednesday Mr. Russo demanded that Mr. Doscher turn over by Friday the more than $1 million the business has in a Chase Bank to a receivership account Mr. Russo has created at Bridgehampton National Bank.

Mr. Russo said in his letter to the attorneys that Mr. Doscher's Facebook posting was in direct violation of the court order, which stipulated that Mr. Doscher is "restrained from interfering in any way" with the receiver's operation of the business.

Mr. Russo, who also filed the letter with the clerk for Justice Garguilo, demanded that Mr. Doscher remove the posting and substitute a retraction instead. He also asked that Mr. Doscher be instructed to contact all news outlets to alert them to the retraction.

Mr. Russo's warned that if Mr. Doscher does not comply with his demands, he risks facing criminal charges of contempt of court.