East Hampton Town police made fewer overall arrests last year, but more arrests for driving while intoxicated — another year that has led Chief Michael Sarlo to say that “we live in an extremely safe community.”
From fewer domestic violence calls and vehicle traffic law incidents to an increase in identity theft and larceny cases, the year in policing is documented in the department’s official 2024 statistics report, released on March 4.
“The annual report is a valuable mode of department self-evaluation,” Chief Sarlo said in an email to The Star. It is “an assessment tool to continuously review our activity levels, what types of calls and crimes are taking up our patrol time, how our enforcement efforts impact public safety, and what we should be focusing on in training for our officers and supervision of our staff. It is also a positive way to allow the public to understand how busy we actually are, and to shed some light on what may be misconceptions about townwide trends.”
Police made 190 D.W.I. arrests, a number that has been trending up since 2022. Chief Sarlo pointed to the “outstanding efforts of officers like Nicole Fierro” — who was named the department’s officer of the year — “as well as a new patrol duty chart moved to in 2024, which puts two squads working straight 10-hour tour overnight shifts. It seems these officers adapt to nighttime patrols and make D.W.I. detection and enforcement a top priority.”
Police made 406 overall vehicle traffic law arrests, outside of the D.W.I. number, while at the same time issuing fewer tickets. There were 4,454 traffic summonses issued last year, down from 5,867 in 2023. Town police wrote 5,012 parking tickets and 1,000 town code violations.
The total arrest number across all criminal offenses, 539, was down from 592 in 2023, but Chief Sarlo called that a relatively normal fluctuation. “It’s a challenge to draw any specific correlation,” he said. He surmised that it “could be specifically related to more motorist compliance with license, registration, and insurance suspension and revocation laws, or it may be related to fewer overall traffic stops. We will continue to evaluate that.”
Surprising perhaps no one, reports of identity theft and related incidents in East Hampton jumped from 76 cases in 2023 to 106 in 2024. Chief Sarlo called this number an “area of changing dynamics.”
For context, according to a report released Monday by the Federal Trade Commission, across the U.S. incidents of identity theft “remained stable” at around 2.6 million in 2024, but one in three of those cases involved a loss of money.
“The data we’re releasing today shows that scammers’ tactics are constantly evolving. The F.T.C. is monitoring those trends closely and working hard to protect the American people from fraud,” Christopher Mufarrige, director of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a press release.
There were 127 reports of theft (larceny), which was up from 114 such reports in 2023, but the 2024 number is still about 24 percent lower than the five-year high.
In East Hampton in 2024, police responded to a total of 114 incidents involving an “emotionally disturbed” person needing to be taken to a facility for treatment. That number is trending upward over the last few years.
“We are concerned with an uptick in transports of emotionally disturbed persons, with a five-year high of 114 such cases in 2024, which is a national policing issue with mental health initiatives and safely handling those in need of assistance,” Chief Sarlo said.
In over 25,000 “public interactions” between police personnel and civilians, there were just four complaints by members of the public, and just nine incidents of “use of force” by an officer. Thirteen officers “suffered some sort of injury during the course of their duties.”
“De-escalation, officer safety, and professional and proactive enforcement remain priorities for our department as we work collaboratively to provide public safety to the residents of the Town of East Hampton,” Chief Sarlo said.