Sag Harbor Village police have received several reports of “swatting” calls from Main Street businesses recently, three from Sag Pizza and another, last week, to Apple Bank.
Swatting, according to 911.gov, is defined as falsely reporting an emergency to public safety, with the intent of getting a SWAT team response to a location where no emergency exists.”
On the phone Tuesday, Charlie Pirolo, director of operations for Sag Pizza, described the situation as “pretty unfortunate.”
“These are some serious threats they’re calling in,” he said.
The first call to Sag Pizza, warning of a man with a possible bomb on his chest, came on Feb. 25 and was immediately reported to police. The dispatcher alerted officers that it could be a false alarm, and they found no such person at the site. Whoever called Sag Pizza could not be reached.
On the afternoon of March 23, a caller alerted police that someone with a gun was at the Sag Pizza building. Officers found nothing suspicious, nor did a surveillance camera show anything out of the ordinary.
Then on April 2, a caller told the restaurant there was “a man with a gun, demanding $10,000,” holding a female hostage in the bathroom of the building. Police found both bathrooms empty and staff reported seeing and hearing nothing alarming. Mr. Pirolo said business was continuing as usual.
Most recently, on Saturday afternoon, a woman called Sag Harbor police directly and claimed there were several bombs in the vicinity of Apple Bank. They had an hour to defuse the bombs, she said, adding that notes “written in invisible ink” had been left at multiple locations around the village, with instructions on how to contact the caller.
Police again used the Hamptons.com live camera to survey the area, and saw no suspicious activity. Outside the bank, officers determined that the doors were closed and locked; nothing unusual was visible through the windows.
The same woman later called the East Hampton Village Police Department, whose dispatcher reported that she sounded like a “teenaged female,” who’d laughed repeatedly and said, “Okay, love you, Pookie Bear.”
The phone number she’d called from was international, and the report was deemed to be a swatting attempt.
All these reports remain under active investigation by the Sag Harbor Police Department, which had no further comment at this time.