Arrests across East Hampton Town were down last year, as were overall calls to town police, according to the department’s year-end report, presented to the town board on Tuesday. The number of arrests, 460, has trended down since 2022, when it bounced up following a five-year low attributed to the Covid pandemic.
Some charges — among them harassment, criminal trespass, and larceny — did show increases, due, said Chief Michael Sarlo, to changes in reporting methods. In previous years, he told the board, those crimes had been batched together, creating a system where only the top charge would be reported. In other words, “a domestic assault would only be listed as an assault, but now may include the criminal mischief or criminal trespass charge as well.”
Although the reported number of other crimes — assault, burglary, and juvenile cases — spiked by as much as 240 percent, the chief said the change in tabulating explained it. “We didn’t have a spike in crime,” he assured the town board, calling the new reporting system “a more in-depth look” at the statistics.
For example, he said, while burglaries were reportedly up 240 percent, that number represents only 17 total cases (up from five) for the year. Over all, he noted, quality of life reports — noise, civil, and speed complaints — were down.
Motor vehicle accidents are also trending down, said the chief. From around a thousand in 2024, 777 were reported. He cited the reconfiguration of several troublesome intersections, and decreased speed limits, as a factor in the improvement.
Over the last four years there has also been a significant decrease in fraud reports and sexual offenses, but one area — detainer requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement — was up sharply in 2025. From 2021 to 2024, the federal agency made just one such request, but last year ICE intervened in 19 cases.
Those requests are civil in nature, Chief Sarlo added, and stemmed from arrests made locally when fingerprints are entered in a federal database. The chief pointed out that local police cannot legally hold an arrestee after arraignment or “extend their detention solely based on a detainer.”
And while ICE sent many more requests for detainers, local police said they have not seen an increase in the agency’s presence in East Hampton.
Speaking of the decrease in numbers of arrests, Chief Sarlo called it a possible indicator that an increase in training officers in the fields of crime prevention and community relations may be succeeding. According to the annual report, officers are trained in 23 different areas in-house and 28 areas off site. The motor vehicle investigation unit, a group of six that takes a month’s training in accident reconstruction, is included in those numbers.
Detectives are offered 14 training courses, and public safety dispatchers, 12. Altogether, top police brass logged 228 hours of training and detectives logged over 1,100 hours.
Speaking of last week’s car accident on the Napeague stretch and the road’s subsequent hours-long closure, the chief explained that New York State mandates road closures following a serious physical injury, a death, a commercial vehicle involvement, or property damage. That is when the accident reconstruction and investigation unit, which must “plot multiple points of data and sometimes call county investigators,” takes over.
In keeping with one of its annual goals, the Police Department has also expanded its drone program, adding more officers and training in the technology. Drone units assisted in nine investigations in 2025, including missing persons, welfare checks, overwater searches, and graffiti inquiries.
Marine Patrol and the dive team are using the technology as well, the chief noted. In several cases, drones have been used to spot and monitor brush fires in the Napeague area as well. In sum, said Chief Sarlo, 2025 was a year of “big technology improvements.”
