On Saturday during Soldier Ride the Hamptons, the grandson of Tom Collins, a Springs resident who played a crucial role as a cryptologist in World War II and died in 2011, will ride on Team Sam Scram, a group organized in Mr. Collins’s honor.

Brendan Collins, 40, had not found the time to participate in the ride until now, five years after Rachel Kleinberg, a cousin by marriage, formed the group. But this year, he has brought his wife and children from their home in Connecticut to watch him cycle.

In 1998 information came to light about the late Mr. Collins’s highly secret work in the Army as a cryptologist assigned to fly to Bletchley Park in England with the code-breaking machine the Dragon, which eventually decoded Nazi messages and defeated the Third Reich.

“He didn’t even know where he was going until he got there,” said Brendan Collins, recounting that when his grandfather landed overseas, confused about his whereabouts, the pilot turned to him and said, “I was just told to fly you here.”

Once in England, the late Mr. Collins became a part of the team that helped interpret Nazi messages. Before he died, Representative Tim Bishop commended him on the Congressional floor and the British government awarded him a certificate of recognition.

“He never told anybody. He didn’t breathe a word,” said his grandson. Mr. Collins admired his grandfather for his “to hell with you” attitude and ability to take his job seriously.

Shortly after Mr. Collins died, Ms. Kleinberg realized she wanted to cycle for him at Soldier Ride. She is an avid biker and rides from Springs to the Montauk School, where she is the librarian. The late Mr. Collins was also a supporter of Soldier Ride and the Wounded Warrior Project.

Ms. Kleinberg gathered locals and formed Team Sam Scram after the nickname the British gave Mr. Collins during the war. Brendan Collins’s son is also named Sam.

The team consists mainly of Mr. Collins’s former colleagues or acquaintances from the Springs Fire Department ambulance squad. Since its founding, the team has raised an estimated $65,000. 

Now with the youngest Mr. Collins riding, the event is turning into a family affair. Mike Collins, Brendan’s father, hasn’t ridden on the team, but has become an integral part of its development and helps to keep up morale. Each year, he cheers from the sidelines, holding up signs and driving by the riders to check on them.

“He just has this way of motivating people,” said Ms. Kleinberg. “He pushed us to raise money for this worthy cause and go the extra mile, so to speak.” 

Brendan Collins also isn’t much of a rider, but hopes the excitement of the event will push him through.

“I’m sure I’m going to be sore, but it’s nothing compared to what these guys are going through,” he said, referring to the soldiers.

A preview of artwork that will be up for auction at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center’s summer fund-raiser on Aug. 1 is now available for viewing at a pop-up gallery on the upper level of a building behind Ben and Jerry’s ice cream shop in the harbor area. The preview is open daily from 4 to 7 p.m. through July 31.

Each year Playhouse officials choose a person or several to honor at the event. This year they have chosen to honor more than 70 Montauk artists for the “vibrant culture and character they bring to the community.”

The auction items, which include sculptures, illustrations, and signed manuscripts, as well as cultural experiences such as music lessons, photo shoots, studio tours, and custom portraits, are posted online and can be bid on at montaukplayhouse.org/pop-up-gallery. Opening bids start at $50 and go as high as $2,000.

Another item up for auction is a one-hour concert by the Lynn Blue Band at a celebration or a private party at a residence. Joe Delia, known as a Mick Jagger look-alike, has donated a concert performance featuring his favorite original song, “Under the Montauk Moon.” The winning bidder can have his or her name inserted into the song.

Lilah Gosman and Milos Repicky, the couple who recently reinstated the Music for Montauk series, will perform a set of songs in a successful bidder’s home for a special occasion. A pianist, Mr. Repicky will use your piano if you have one, otherwise he will provide a keyboard. The Montauk Project, a hard-rock band, has donated a private concert at a venue of choice.

On Saturday a reception was held to mark the opening of the pop-up gallery, the space for which was donated by Chip Duryea in the shop directly across from Second Story Consignment. People mingled and viewed some of the artwork up for grabs, one colorful piece in particular, “Hashtag” by Joseph Eschenberg, drawing the attention of guests for its use of mixed-media materials — prior promotional donations from Peter Beard and Julian Schnabel. Valued at $2,000, its opening bid is $1,000.

The fund-raiser will also have a live auction, dinner, and dancing to the music of the Nancy Atlas Project. Tickets cost $350 and are available online at montuakplayhouse.org or at the Playhouse office. The number to call for more information is 668-1124.

A bicyclist was injured, and then ticketed for failing to stop at a stop sign, after he was hit by a pickup truck in East Hampton Village on Thursday afternoon. 

East Hampton Village Police Capt. Mike Tracey said the driver of the pickup truck came down Mill Hill Lane and stopped at the stop sign at the corner of Main Street, near c/o the Maidstone, at about 2:45 p.m. The bicyclist also came down the hill, but ignored the stop sign and tried to pass the truck on the right, just as the truck was getting ready to turn right. "He went into the side of the truck," Captain Tracey said. The names of the bicyclist and driver were not immediately released. 

The bicycle came to rest underneath the two-door pickup, with some of its back tire and the seat sticking out from under the passenger side of the small truck. The bicyclist was lying on the ground being attended by members of the East Hampton Village Ambulance Association. He was taken to Southampton Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. 

"It could have been a lot worse — a lot worse," Captain Tracey said to a passer-by who had stopped to help. 

The cyclist was ticketed because he is required to stop at a stop sign, the captain said. 

Among the many visitors to the South Fork this summer is a dangerous multicellular organism making an appearance along the shore.

The Portuguese man-of-war, a highly toxic warm-water creature that resembles and acts like a jellyfish, has been spotted over the past few weeks on Gibson Beach in Sagaponack, Georgica Beach in East Hampton Village, Indian Wells and Atlantic Avenue Beaches in Amagansett, and South Edison and Ditch Plain Beaches in Montauk.

“We’ve seen a few of them, not a whole lot,” said John Ryan, the chief of the East Hampton lifeguards. After a storm two weeks ago today, they began popping up thanks to a northeast wind that brought warm water from the Gulf Stream closer to shore, he said.

Portuguese men-of-war have arrived in much larger numbers in New Jersey, and have also been seen in western Suffolk County and around Fire Island this summer. The last time they were seen on the South Fork was two years ago.

With a floating body, it is their long tentacles attached to their undercarriage that have microscopic barbed stinging cells that pack a painful punch when they penetrate human skin. Several people have photographed the beached creatures, but there have been no reports of stings at protected beaches, according to Mr. Ryan and Christopher F. Bean, the superintendent of parks and recreation for Southampton Town.

Symptoms differ based on where a person is stung. The Suffolk County Regional Emergency Medical Service Council said in a bulletin last week that symptoms include pain at the sting site, abdominal pain, chest pain, changes in heart rate, headache, muscle pain or spasm, numbness and weakness, difficulty swallowing, runny nose and watery eyes, and collapse. 

Information was posted for lifeguards in East Hampton so they would know how to help swimmers who are stung, Mr. Ryan said. He recommends pouring fresh water — warm or cold — on the site, and removing all tentacles, followed by heat or ice, depending on which feels better.

Mara Dias, the water quality manager with the Surfrider Foundation’s eastern Long Island chapter, said she was out collecting water samples from Georgica Pond and the ocean beach nearby when she saw some of the creatures. “These jellyfish are scary, but the bacteria levels we have been finding in some creeks and enclosed bay beaches in Montauk and East Hampton, especially after significant rainfall, are even scarier,” she said.

When the Great Bonac Fireworks show, a national-class Grucci Fireworks midsummer display, begins sparkling over Three Mile Harbor on Saturday night, Laura Sobieski will have a front-row seat.

Ms. Sobieski, a resident of Brooklyn who will head east for her first visit to East Hampton tomorrow, will be spending the weekend, gratis, at a harbor-front residence on Babe’s Lane, the guest of the homeowner, Chris Rowan, who rents out a room in her house on summer weekends through the online short-term rental company Airbnb.

Inspired by a program last year through which Airbnb sent $10 to those who have listings on the site, asking them to “pay it forward” and donate it or use it to do a good deed, Ms. Rowan decided to go several steps further. She decided to offer two nights’ lodging on a prime July weekend — perhaps the prime summer weekend at her house, given its perfect location for viewing the fireworks display — to someone who could use a break.

Ms. Sobieski is an acquaintance, Ms. Rowan said this week, and had been struggling with the effects of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. “She’s been through it, and through it all she’s had a wonderful attitude,” Ms. Rowan said.

While Ms. Sobieski will be the fireworks weekend guest this year, Ms. Rowan said that, to continue the tradition in future summers, she will allow anyone who books a stay with her before Memorial Day to suggest the next recipient of her “random act of kindness” — someone, perhaps, who has had a loss in the family, is undergoing financial hardships, or has been ill. One person will be chosen, “and we’ll invite them to come,” Ms. Rowan said.

“It doesn’t cost us anything; we don’t make the money, but it doesn’t cost us anything,” she said. “It gives somebody a chance to get away from the madness of their lives.”

“That’s the idea — pay it forward,” she said. However, there is a catch: each guest will be asked to help with another good deed while they’re here — helping to raise money for the Clamshell Foundation, an East Hampton nonprofit that sponsors the fireworks and makes grants to support various community programs.

Each year, the Clamshell Foundation scrambles to raise the money to pay for the popular fireworks show, a summer tradition it took over seven years ago after the closing and sale of the Boys Harbor camp, for which the show had long been a main fund-raising event.

Donations are collected through the Clamshell Foundation website, clamshellfoundation.org, and by selling caps and T-shirts, with new designs annually by noted local artists. Seafaring volunteers in boats visit the watercraft that crowd Three Mile Harbor for the fireworks show to make sales and solicit support.

“It’s all about raising money for different programs here in town,” Rossetti Perchik, the foundation’s founder, said this week. “So make those donations.”

In addition to the fireworks show, which marks its 35th anniversary this year, Clamshell sponsors an annual sand castle contest at Atlantic Beach in Amagansett in August. Proceeds are used to help stock local food pantries, support environmental efforts, arts programs, and youth activities, and to give annual scholarship awards to high school graduates.

(This year’s Great Bonac Fireworks T-shirt design is by John Jinks. David Geiser did the sand castle T-shirt design — “two of the most dynamic” images, Mr. Perchik said, since the sand castle event began in 1992.)

Ms. Sobieski didn’t know it yet when she spoke to The Star by phone earlier this week, but arrangements have been made to get her out on the water on Saturday night — an even better spot from which to watch the fireworks, and where she can help collect Clamshell Foundation donations.

With Ms. Rowan and others, she will be a guest on a boat belonging to Dr. Mike Antonelle, another resident of Springs who raised over $1,100 last year during the fireworks.

“It’s like one big circle kind of thing,” Ms. Rowan said of spreading the good works around.

Ms. Sobieski said she had received the invitation to come to East Hampton back in February — Ms. Rowan made “a very cute little invitation,” she said — but that she wasn’t certain that her health would allow her to come. But her doctor gave her the all-clear. “It’s nice to be back to normal, to be able to come to an event like this weekend . . . to be with people,” she said. “It’s been a pretty crazy couple of years.”

After her diagnosis and a stem cell transplant, Ms. Sobieski went into remission only to learn later that her cancer had returned. She had to be treated again. It is now being monitored, she said, and is not expected to recur.

Through it all, she said, “it was amazing, the generosity that you find in people. As terrible of a situation that it is, the amount of people that supported me was more than I would have imagined.”

That in itself inspired her to continue efforts she had already been making on behalf of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and others with whom she worked did so as well.

“One of my things is to participate in whatever I can to help someone else out,” she said. On Saturday, hopefully while enjoying herself, she will have an opportunity to do just that, having a hand in helping to engender whatever community assistance the Clamshell Foundation will provide in the coming year.

The fireworks will go off just after dark, around 9 p.m. Prime viewing spots can be found all around Three Mile Harbor.

A soundtrack will be simulcast on the Peconic Public Broadcasting station, 88.3 FM WPPB.The music accompanying the fireworks show can also be heard through a new Fireworks by Grucci app, Mr. Perchik said. It is available as a free download for both iPhones and Android phones from the iTunes store, and from Google Play.

Former Representative Tim Bishop wasted no time at the East Hampton Library on Saturday in answering the question he had posed in the title of his talk — “The U.S. Congress: Is the Branch Still Broken?”

“Yes,” he said.

Mr. Bishop represented New York’s First Congressional District for six terms until his defeat in November. Now a professor of civic engagement and public service at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, Mr. Bishop identified what he called “the three Ms,” maps, money, and media, as the causes of Congressional dysfunction, and he implored his audience to vote and to encourage others to do so.

The 435 congressional districts are mapped in such a way that only 40 to 50 are truly competitive, he said. Because few incumbents represent a “swing” district, they have no incentive to occupy the middle of the political spectrum, fearing a primary challenger. “There’s been a retreat to the extremes on both sides,” he said, “because when your principal motivation is avoiding a primary, you’re going to move in those directions. The middle has essentially been abandoned.”

According to Mr. Bishop, the Republican Party’s center of gravity “has moved decidedly to the right.” Most moderate Republicans have retired and been replaced by those who are more conservative, he said. In addition, the number of Democrats from the South, who are typically less liberal than other members of their party, decreased from 60 when he took office to 18 now.

“The money exacerbates the extremes,” Mr. Bishop said, citing the 2010 Citizens United ruling in which the Supreme Court struck down restrictions on political spending by corporations and unions. Given the ideological chasm between the two parties, “being in the majority is more important,” he said. “The elections have become more vicious than they used to be.”

Omnipresent political talk media, Mr. Bishop said, also contributes to the rancor. “All of us are constantly being bombarded with whatever messages people consider would resonate,” he said, regardless of their accuracy. “You hear the same factually incorrect messages over and over, and pretty soon people are making judgments on issues they don’t understand and have no information on.”

The breakdown of bipartisanship and civility in Congress began with Newt Gingrich, a Republican who became speaker of the House in 1995, Mr. Bishop said. “His approach was that the Democrats had been the majority party for 40-some years, and the only way to dislodge Democrats from what had become for them a very comfortable perch was to basically blow up the Congress and demonstrate to the American people that Congress could not function under its current leadership, and the only remedy was to change that leadership,” Mr. Bishop said. “That was the beginning of the coarseness that permeates politicaldiscourse in Washington and elsewhere.”

The election of President Barack Obama worsened an environment that was already bitter, in Mr. Bishop’s opinion. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, “said his number-one priority was to see that Barack Obama was a one-term president,” Mr. Bishop said. “The way you do that is to shut down the Senate through the use of the 60-threshold,” the so-called filibuster rule. “That was a calculated political strategy, put in place so as to see to it that the Obama presidency had very little to show.” That led to a Republican stance that “the only way forward is new leadership,” and Republican success in the 2010 election.

Another particularly troubling development, Mr. Bishop said, is “the acceptance of legislative hostage-taking as a legitimate means of achieving one’s goals,” citing the debt-ceiling crisis of 2011, which led to the downgrading of the federal government’s credit rating and the government shutdown two years later.

In the latter instance, the Affordable Care Act was the hostage, Mr. Bishop said, with Republicans refusing to allow a vote on an appropriations resolution that was not accompanied by a delay or repeal of the act. “What was not available to the Republicans at the ballot box or in the judicial realm, they decided to try to get through other means,” Mr. Bishop said, calling it “a real break from tradition.”

With Republicans enjoying majorities in both the House and Senate, “the motivation is completely different,” Mr. Bishop said, pointing to “somewhat more movement,” particularly in the Senate. However, a schism between “the conservative right and the really, really conservative right,” he said, “is presenting its own contribution to dysfunction.”

Mr. Bishop said that last week’s decision by Florida’s Supreme Court striking down a redistricting map that it said was drawn intentionally to favor Republican incumbents and disadvantage Democrats, was a positive development that could have national implications. He added that gerrymandering should be outlawed and congressional districts drawn by nonpartisan committees.

His overall message on Saturday was clear: “As a country we must become dramatically more civically engaged. . . . Our participatory democracy only works if we participate.”

Behind a Porta--Potty and heaps of rubble, the John Jermain Memorial Library in Sag Harbor continues to chug through its long, drawn-out construction phase. But with the latest completion date projected for the end of this year, the library’s fervent director, Cathy Creedon, can finally envision the structure, despite its still-skeletal annex in back, as a functioning form.

Several steps above street level, the original 1910 Classical Revival library regally oversees a corner on Main Street across from the Whaling and Historical Museum, which once served as the summer home of the library’s founder, Mrs. Russell Sage. Today, the library appears to have held up nicely, but a decade ago, Ms. Creedon discovered it crumbling with soggy bricks and realized it not only needed an expansion but also preservation. The library received a permit in 2012 and she has since been toiling away with architects, construction workers, village residents, and government entities to both retain the library’s earliest beauty and add a modern wing.

“It’s such a glorious building,” she said, admiring its exterior one recent afternoon before a tour of the site. “The level of support has never wavered.”

A sculpture of five books atop a stone column beside the entrance reveals the funding the project has received. Each book’s spine displays contributions descending from $1 million to $200,000. Throughout the tour Ms. Creedon giddily praised these contributions, which have now reached $14.5 million, including $10 million received in a referendum approved by the Sag Harbor School District in 2009.

Upon beginning construction, numerous surprises, some favorable and others distressing, waited for Ms. Creedon and her team. The echoing interior of the original library sweeps out into a circular foyer. The terrazzo mosaic tiles Ms. Creedon unearthed on this level still lay beneath dust and plastic sheets, but the gift delighted her and she left it as the flooring. This mezzanine will become a digital classroom fitted with a projector, alcoves, and cozy round offices.

On the molding near the ceiling in a corner office, mold resembling ivory fungus still latches onto the plaster. Ms. Creedon plans to scrape it off and seemed more concerned that the necessary overhead sprinkler system is an eyesore. To fix this annoyance, she tracked down four of the original six chandeliersto help distract from the unsightly heads. A few were hiding in the basement of the Whaling Museum, but she refused to disclose the location of the others.

A shaft carved from the left wall on the first floor contains a spiral staircase with wood-varnished handrails and freshly painted slate spinals. It leads one flight up to the octagonal, brick rotunda built by Guastavino, the architect who designed iconic tile arches like the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station.

The stained-glass dome with a petal flower in the center caused a few frustrations after Ms. Creedon found it leaking. Furthermore, the copper encasing had deteriorated from screws twisting into the metal. Workers removed the windowpane, piece by piece, cleaned it, and resorted it. This area will transform into a reading room, and tucked by the fireplace alcove, an area once used as a storeroom, stands the quarter-sawn tiger oak bookcases that will eventually line the perimeter.

“I don’t love oak, but I love this woodwork,” Ms. Creedon said.

Since this project began, Ms. Creedon has turned into a kind of amateur engineer, although she demurs that title. Through a door leading to the new three-story expansion, she talked about the seismic joint connecting the two buildings, a link used so as not to harm the older library.

The 7,000-square-foot addition hugs the back of the original building in a semicircle. It is still a bare-bone framework of concrete and metal rods, but it feels vastly more contemporary than the original library. Ms. Creedon explained the United States Department of the Interior recommends new additions not minimize the characteristics of the original structure so that if they are ever removed, the older building can once again stand on its own. High windows, through which western light will stream in, contrast from the peepholes in the original library. Down a back staircase with rubber flooring, windows look out onto a not-yet-existent garden. On the basement level, a glass tracking door will block off a conference room for about 30 people.

Ms. Creedon painted a vivid picture of the completed library, but the majority of the area still remains a pile of bricks. Only a handful of workers labored away on July 6 and with each day alternating between the glass and steel crews, it has been a slow process.

“They have to step it up,” Ms. Creedon whispered. A sign leaning on the white fence cordoning off the construction zone optimistically reads 2013 as the completion year. Nonetheless, Ms. Creedon excitedly awaits the refurbished library’s debut and ignored the glare and dust cloaking her laptop screen as she showed off photographs and renderings even after the tour ended.

The arrival of Suffolk County’s new area code on Saturday means residents need to start thinking twice when making local phone calls, something they seldom, if ever, have had to do.

Current telephone numbers will remain the same, but the implementation of a 934 area code means callers will eventually have to dial 10 digits, even locally within the same area code. Also, devices wired for 7 digits will need to be reset to include all 10. 

Contact lists for automatic dialing will have to be updated to include all 10 numbers, as will business cards, stationery, and so on.

The rollout comes more than a year after the New York State Public Service Commission began the process to address the inevitable exhaustion of 631 codes by the first quarter of 2016. It held a public hearing on alternative strategies last July and in December decided to institute an overlay system, which keeps current numbers as is, but assigns all new lines the 934 code.

The reigning 631 code is the only existing one in the entire county and has identified this part of Long Island since its creation in 1999, when it split from Nassau County’s code, 516. Now, many residents along the East End do not bother to discern an area code when relaying phone messages or giving out their numbers. Often classified ads in newspapers, websites, and voicemails only include a seven-digit number.

In the future, the long-standing, cherished 631 could indicate a position of rank or prominence here. Established residents will be able to spot a newcomer. After Manhattan’s prevailing 212 code had to make room for subsequent 646 and 917 numbers, the original still remains a status symbol among city-dwellers. Marina Van, the executive director of the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce, wasn’t aware of the changeup, but boasted that her cellphone is still equipped with a 516 area code from 1996.

Residents who lived in Suffolk County through the 516 rupture, like Ms. Van, remember the hassle of changing numbers on stationery and business cards. However, since an overlay system simply adds a new number and does not split regions, frustrations should be limited, according to John Bonomo, an AT&T spokesperson.

“You as a resident now, there’s nothing that you would need to do,” he said.

He said that if someone adds a new line, he or she would need to update business cards regardless, so the new area code should not matter.

But the need to dial an area code, even when making a call to a number with the same prefix, may take some getting used to. Resident reactions have been mixed, however.

“I think it’s kind of odd. I mean 934, it seems like a stranger. But 631 always had a good feeling to me,” said Monte Farber of Enchanted World Emporium of East Hampton Village, who wrote a book on numerology.

Mr. Farber explained that regarding 934, 7 becomes the “hidden” number to analyze in numerology since the sum of 9, 3, and 4 equals 16 and the sum of 1 and 6 equals 7. According to Mr. Farber, 7 can symbolize time spent alone before a new debut.

Mary Croghan of the East Hampton Business Service thinks the change will be a nuisance.

“I’m a little familiar with the having to dial with 10 digits,” said Ms. Croghan, who also lived here for the 516 switch. She has family in Boston, which implemented an overlay system in 2001.

“It’s a horror. As a result, to dial across the street, you have to dial 10 digits and it’s a real pain in the neck,” she said. However, upon hearing her number will remain unchanged, she felt relief from her initial “Ah, crap” reaction.

Luckily for the hard-wired fingers used to punching in seven numbers, there is an 11-month grace period to make mistakes. After June 18 of next year, however, a recording will interrupt the call, instructing the caller to hang up and try again.

“The ability to have these short-term memory lists while you’re dialing gets more challenging,” said Nancy Franklin, a psychology professor at Stony Brook University who studies memory. She explained that the new area code serves as one chunk rather than three separate numbers and doesn’t think the change will greatly affect residents. But she added, “People have an attachment and it may feel like a demotion,” referring to those who will receive the new area code.   

Furthermore, equipment or phone settings that are programmed to dial a seven-digit number, such as medical devices, fax machines, Internet dial-ups, cellphone contact lists, or voicemail services, must be reset to fit the new 10-digit requirement.

Mr. Farber later embraced a “bring-it-on” attitude.

“I guess if New York can handle 917 and 646, we can handle 934,” he said.

In a $5 million lawsuit against the East Hampton Village Police Department, a Wainscott couple claim they were tortured and humiliated in 2012 after being arrested for protesting during a fund-raiser for Mitt Romney at Ron Perelman's estate on Georgica Pond.

The two men, who are married, claim that their sexual orientation was part of the reason for their alleged mistreatment. They charge that their constitutional rights to free speech, due process, and their right to equal protection under the law were violated.

Simon Kinsella and David Fink, who filed their suit in the United States District Court in Central Islip on Tuesday, have also named East Hampton Village, Police Chief Gerard Larsen, Sgt. Jeffrey Erickson, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr., Capt. Michael Tracey, four unnamed officers, and Officer Eban Ball.

The two say in their complaint that they were flying a rainbow flag in their sailboat, the Trumpeter, on the afternoon of July 8, 2012, on Georgica Pond. They were planning to display a sign that read "Freedom to Marry for All Americans." According to the complaint, they were approached by a motorboat manned by Sergeant Erickson, who, they allege, told them they were not allowed to sail in the pond. They said that the sergeant did not identify himself as an officer.

Chief Larsen, who was out of his office on Thursday, said in a July 12, 2012, article in The Star that the two men had crossed a police line on the pond being patrolled by one boat. That line, the chief said, was drawn up by Secret Service agents, who are in charge of guarding the president and serious candidates for the office, which Mr. Romney was at the time.

In the lawsuit, it is alleged that the Trumpeter was rammed by the motorboat operated by Sergeant Erickson, after which the sergeant then took control of their boat, which they allege was badly damaged.

They claim that after the boat was rammed, Mr. Fink, who was wading to shore, was shoved and held underwater by four unnamed officers, who stepped on his back, for "an unreasonable period of time." Mr. Fink was "pummeled, manhandled, beaten," the complaint reads, "and publicly humiliated, and tortured repeatedly" by the four officers.

All this, they say, was visible to the 100 or so guests at the fund-raiser.

When he spoke about the arrests in 2012, Chief Larsen painted a very different picture of events than that portrayed in the lawsuit, saying that Mr. Fink, when confronted by law enforcement, attempted to flee by swimming to shore and then refused to get out of the water, "where he allegedy waded while screaming obscenities," according to The Star.

After being arrested, the lawsuit says, Mr. Kinsella was handcuffed to a chair at police headquarters, while Mr. Fink was handcuffed to a pole. Mr. Fink and Mr. Kinsella claim that the latter was denied his medication, which he is required to take daily for an unnamed condition, and that requests for medical attention and water by Mr. Fink were ignored. It charges that when Mr. Fink, who has cardiovascular difficulties, finally received treatment, his blood pressure was over 200.

The two men were both charged with the same three counts, disorderly conduct, obstruction of justice, and resisting arrest, charges that were dismissed in early 2013, the complaint says.

Mr. Fink and Mr. Kinsella are being represented by Frederick K. Brewington of Hempstead. The suit has been assigned to Judge Arthur D. Spatt and Magistrate Judge Steven L. Locke.

A Sag Harbor driver who police said just missed hitting three pedestrians on Ocean Avenue in East Hampton Village, including a mother and her 6-month-old baby, was arrested Wednesday and charged with reckless driving and driving with ability impaired by drugs.

The mother, Zoe Wilson, who lives in the village, told police she was jogging with her baby toward Main Beach when she first noticed the Jeep Wranger, which Scott W. Smith, 38, of Sag Harbor was driving "very slowly." He looked "a bit lost," she said.

After reaching the beach, she was jogging back up the sidewalk on Ocean Avenue when she saw the Jeep again, this time parked on the grass near a big white house.

There was an older woman walking on the sidewalk near the vehicle. "All of the sudden, the Jeep began to move slowly, over the sidewalk and into a lamppost," she told police. "I jumped off of the sidewalk with the stroller to avoid being hit," she said. "The older woman also jumped out of the way. If I didn't jump out of the way, the Jeep would have hit us."

Police said Mr. Smith also mowed over a speed-limit sign. After striking the light pole, Mr. Smith put his vehicle into reverse and drove away.

He was found about a block or so away on Lee Avenue. The 2010 Jeep, police said, was in the road, and Mr. Smith was behind the wheel slumped over and unconscious. In his right hand was a can of Dust Destroyer, a compressed air product that is used to clean computers. Known as "duster," it results in a sort of high when inhaled. It is considered highly toxic if used improperly.

According to the officer who found the Jeep, when Mr. Smith came to, he was asked to roll down his window, but was unable to do so.

After several minutes, he told the officer he was coming back from the Bridgehampton Commons, and was headed to Sag Harbor. He also allegedly said that he had taken two prescription drugs, buspirone and Lexapro, both controlled substances.

Placed under arrest, he was taken to police headquarters on Cedar Street, where he consented to have blood drawn. The sample was sent to the Suffolk County Crime Lab for analysis.

Besides the misdemeanor charges, Mr. Smith is also charged with leaving the scene of an accident and failing to maintain his proper lane.

Held overnight, he was arraigned in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Thursday and was released after posting $1,000 bail.