The officer pointed out his cruiser for the night, parked outside of town police headquarters in the Wainscott woods, just after 10 p.m. on Saturday, and set off with a reporter on what would turn out to be an uncharacteristically quiet midnight shift for an August weekend in East Hampton.
As he got into the car and logged into a rugged-looking computer mounted between the two front seats, he announced that the department’s emergency service unit had just left to assist Southampton Town police in response to a report of a “barricaded guy with a rifle” in Hampton Bays. “But it could just be hearsay,” he added, and pulled out of the parking lot onto Wainscott Northwest Road.
A report of an “erratic driver in a yellow Bronco on Stephen Hand’s Path” came across the radio as he traveled down Montauk Highway, and he told Dispatch that he would respond. A car matching the description pulled up to the stoplight there as he approached the intersection minutes later, and the officer made a quick U-turn and slipped right behind the driver as he turned onto the highway.
The Bronco swerved onto the shoulder and back into its lane, and he followed it into the Speedway gas station, where it stopped. The officer spoke to the driver, checked his ID, and led him through a brief sobriety test right there in the station, attracting curious glances from other customers, before determining that he did not appear to be intoxicated and issuing a warning for failing to maintain his lane. The driver picked up the gas nozzle and started to refuel his Bronco, and the officer turned back onto the highway.
The midnight shift typically runs from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., he explained as he drove toward Amagansett. He works four consecutive days, followed by four days off, and stays up for 24 hours at the start of each work week to reacclimate to his schedule; then switches back to a normal circadian rhythm for his days off. He was working a special shift that night, one of nine “payback days” he must complete each year, and was listed as a “floater,” meaning that he could fill in wherever he was needed.
The flow of traffic slowed to a crawl as he neared the Stephen Talkhouse, where the line of people waiting to get in stretched down the block. He usually parks the cruiser and patrols the area on foot, he said. A few weeks earlier, he was standing outside of the restaurant Rosie’s around midnight when someone ran out and told him that a man inside had just slashed two other men’s faces with a broken glass, and that there was “blood everywhere.” He arrested the perpetrator and took him back to headquarters while one of the victims was taken to the emergency room.
Next, he headed toward Maidstone Park in Springs, after consulting a map on the computer indicating that no officers were patrolling there at the time. In the dark, he passed a baby stroller sitting on the side of the road, and got out to check it. “I can’t drive by that without making sure there isn’t anything in it,” he said, adding that it would have bothered him all night.
He also passed a dead deer, and called it in to Dispatch to add to the list of roadkill to be picked up by the Highway Department early in the morning, before most people are out and before it started to smell.
Just before midnight, Dispatch called for a well-being check on Boatheader’s Lane, reporting that a woman, possibly intoxicated, had called 911 and said she’d dropped her phone, before a man’s voice came on the line and said the call was placed accidentally.
Calls like that “could be anything,” the officer said, from a simple mistake to a domestic incident. Another officer was already parked in the driveway when he pulled up, and they approached the house together, carrying flashlights. A middle-aged man wearing pajamas eventually opened the door and let them in.
The caller had been the man’s mother, the officer explained back in the car a few minutes later, and she’d inadvertently activated the emergency call feature after taking an Ambien, which was why she’d sounded intoxicated. Before leaving, he asked the other officer if he knew what had happened in Hampton Bays. He’d heard it was a “domestic,” the other cop replied before getting back into his own cruiser — “menacing,” with an AK-47.
There were a few more traffic stops over the course of the night, and he issued a handful of warnings for violations. He only printed one ticket, after observing a dark-colored van swerving out of its lane, rolling through a stop sign, and turning onto a dark street without signaling. The man at the wheel, who identified himself as an Uber driver, claimed he’d been looking at his phone to pick up passengers nearby. “He was not happy,” the officer said as he returned to the car.
In the summer of 2023, he recalled, he’d pulled over an Uber driver for running a red light, and discovered that the man was on the terrorist watchlist after finding an active warrant for his arrest. There were passengers in the back of the car at the time, who realized something was going on and left, and Homeland Security traveled out to East Hampton that day to take the driver into federal custody.
He drove to Montauk, which was also quiet, aside from a few small pockets of activity around the businesses that were still open — 7-Eleven, The Point, Pizza Village. Saturday nights are rarely this quiet in the middle of August, the officer said. Police typically see a bit of a lull during the week after Labor Day, he added, but weekends are usually crazy until the off-season starts in mid-October.
He passed back through Amagansett, toward Wainscott, where the ride-along drew to a close around 3:30 a.m. The lights were on in the back of Goldberg’s Bagels, where workers were already preparing for the Sunday crowds. In the next hour, he would start seeing trucks delivering newspapers and bread.
The Highway Department would then be passing through to collect the dead animals, and the Parks Department would be emptying out the garbage left overnight in public bins and around the parks. The officer would sign off at 6 a.m., as the sun started to rise, and leave the cruiser at headquarters, ready to take another officer out on patrol.
