Police & Courts

Late Saturday afternoon, not long after the manager of the Balenciaga retail store on Newtown Lane called East Hampton Village police to report a shoplifting, a man fitting the manager’s description of the thief was spotted strolling down the street wearing the missing merchandise.

Officers were summoned on Aug. 23 at 4:34 a.m. to the Montauk 7-Eleven, where a man was seen and heard “screaming at a clerk” about sandwich prices. The man, who turned out to be homeless, was told to calm down.

A man who attempted to gain access last week to the stage at an Upper East Side event where the actress Drew Barrymore was being interviewed has been arrested by Southampton Town police on a misdemeanor charge of stalking.

At Si Si at East Hampton Point Sunday afternoon, an “extremely agitated and intoxicated” East Hampton man, 33, was yelling that his friends had stuck him with a bill of $855.41. Police called his mother, and she called in with a credit card. An officer drove him home, passing on a warning that he’s not permitted to return to the restaurant.

The East Hampton Town Board hired a neutral investigator to probe personnel matters within the Town Police Department in light of the scathing complaint filed in June by Officer Andrea M. Kess alleging she is a victim of gender-based discrimination and harassment in a hostile work environment.

The Long Island Rail Road characterized the blaze as “small,” though it did cause a train to be canceled, and said it was “quickly extinguished and nobody was injured.”

After 40 years on the force, it’s not a single rewarding moment that stands out for East Hampton Village Police Chief Michael Tracey but rather “the little things. Maybe you pull someone over and they’re scared to death, their hands are shaking, and you can put them at ease. You have to be willing, and awake, and paying attention, to see the opportunity to make a difference.”

East Hampton Town police charged a Montauk man with third-degree criminal mischief, a felony, following an Aug. 8 incident at Gurney’s Montauk Resort and Seawater Spa.

Prosecutors in both Suffolk County and town court systems are turning up the heat on drunken drivers, leaving them with little room to plead down their charges.

Lifeguards were busy on East Hampton beaches in the last week, with rip currents and marine life matching up with heavy crowds. “We made 16 saves between Aug. 7 and Aug. 14,” said Drew Smith, the head lifeguard for East Hampton Village. “We’ve had an unusually busy summer.”

A Lily Pond Lane homeowner lodged a civil complaint on Aug. 8 against a contractor “who had not been removing his shoes as he’d been instructed to do.” The contractor agreed to abide by her rules in future. A few days later, a manager at Stop and Shop reported two customers arguing over the price of watermelon on Friday afternoon and asked that police intervene.

East Hampton Town police arrested two men on Monday who are alleged to be responsible for the theft of hand tools from an unoccupied house on Harbor Boulevard in Springs.