Police & Courts

Voters in fire districts across the South Fork can head to the polls Tuesday to elect commissioners who will oversee budgets, provide equipment, maintain facilities and trucks, and support training for volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians. The only contested race locally is in Bridgehampton.

A blue Mazda pickup truck belonging to a 25-year-old Texas woman got stuck on Navy Beach in Montauk on the evening of Nov. 29. Two officers were able to push the vehicle to safety. The woman left the beach that night with an East Hampton Town-style souvenir: a ticket for lacking a beach-driving permit.

Suffolk County and East Hampton Town law enforcement agencies are seeking help from the public in identifying two men suspected of burglarizing Kenny’s Castaways, a Montauk bar and restaurant, on Nov. 9.

Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney on Tuesday announced the arrest of a Montauk man said to be responsible for spray-painting swastikas and antisemitic phrases in the hamlet on Oct. 30 and Nov. 11.

The Sag Harbor Village Board, on Monday, formally served the village’s police chief, Austin J. McGuire, who had been suspended on Friday, with charges including misconduct, incompetence, and insubordination.

A man with sex crime charges pending in North Carolina was taken into custody at the commercial fishing dock off West Lake Drive in Montauk on Nov. 17.

East Hampton Village police were called to a village-owned building at Two Mile Hollow Beach on the morning of Nov. 18 when it was discovered that a toilet had been used but not flushed, and in fact could not be flushed because the water had been turned off for the winter.

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association, an independent nonprofit, petitioned the Suffolk County Supreme Court on Nov. 15 to ignore a statute of limitations that would prevent it from suing East Hampton Village for what the association alleges was a takeover of its ambulance service certificate and its bank account. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Clean Slate Act into law last Thursday, saying that “the best crime-fighting tool is a good-paying job. That’s why I support giving New Yorkers a clean slate after they’ve paid their debt to society and gone years without an additional offense.”

The steel-hulled, 60-foot trawler named Act I, captained by Chuck Morici, had caught 4,000 pounds of porgy and had no issues on Nov. 15 before near tragedy occurred: “A three-inch piece of steel let go by the keel cooler pipe,” he said by phone on dry land Monday. “I could see daylight through the hull.” Three Coast Guard stations were called in to save the day.

Public school districts on the South Fork are increasingly turning to retired police officers to fill critical security roles. “These are people who have children in the schools or have gone through the schools themselves, who know the community. They’re familiar faces, and they’re responsive,” said Adam Fine, the East Hampton School District superintendent.

Two Marine Patrol officers observed some 10 vehicles parked between mile markers 1A and 13A on Napeague on Nov. 14, shortly after 9 p.m., and questioned their owners. Every truck belonged to someone who was fishing on the beach for tuna or striped bass. No one was ticketed.

The first time this happened, the community responded in force that same afternoon with a rally attended by hundreds at the downtown Montauk green. While there was no rally this time around, a group of Montauk School students and parents took matters into their own hands by painting over the hateful scrawlings by day’s end with a colorful mural.

Police got a call about “two subjects performing lewd acts in a white Nissan Rogue” at Main Beach last Thursday night. Officers found just one person in the car, a woman who said she’d been watching a movie on her phone.

Three fire departments battled a blaze Wednesday afternoon that destroyed a house on Springs-Fireplace Road near Harrison Avenue in Springs. The house had been unoccupied but for multiple pets, which are thought to have died in the fire.

A steel-hulled fishing vessel out of Montauk named Act I began sinking Wednesday morning about five nautical miles south of Watch Hill, R.I., east of Fishers Island. The Coast Guard Station in Montauk was called to assist.

East Hampton Village police nabbed a man and a woman from Queens on Friday who they say match the description of shoplifters who hit the Balenciaga store twice this year, once on July 1 and again on Sept. 17. A spokesperson for Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said by email on Tuesday that there was "no indication" that the pair are connected to the organized gang from Newark, N.J., who carried out a dramatic daytime handbag heist at the shop in March 2022.

East Hampton Town police are canvassing downtown Montauk after new antisemitic graffiti was discovered Saturday morning on the side of Bounce Beach Montauk on South Emerson Street. 

East Hampton Town police are investigating a string of thefts in Montauk in which valuables were stolen from at least four cars sometime from the evening of Oct. 30 into the morning of Oct. 31.

A man was seen stealing a pack of Boar’s Head bacon on Friday morning at Damark’s Market on Three Mile Harbor Road. After an officer spoke to him, the man returned to the store to pay $8.

The Amagansett Fire Department, with help from the East Hampton Fire Department, contained a house fire that shut down Montauk Highway near Handy Lane for about three hours last Thursday afternoon.

A 51-year-old East Hampton man has been charged with multiple misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child after he allegedly made what the East Hampton School District called "an unauthorized stop" during his morning bus route on Wednesday, Nov. 1.

A 44-year-old East Hampton man is facing a felony charge of first-degree criminal contempt for allegedly violating an order of protection stemming from an incident witnessed by a 14-year-old child.

An officer went to Sag Harbor's Windmill Beach Saturday afternoon to check on a man who’d been seen lying on the sand for some time. What with the great weather that day — the temperature was near 70 and the sun was strong — he’d fallen asleep, he said. He was fine.

On local roads in the last 10 days, a total of six people were taken to the hospital after car crashes in East Hampton and Montauk.

Hundreds of Montaukers and friends from nearby communities came together Monday afternoon — with friends calling friends calling friends, until the gazebo was nearly surrounded — to stand up against antisemitism, which reared its ugly head at dawn that day when swastikas and other hateful graffiti were discovered spray-painted in several places in the hamlet.

An East Hampton Town Police dispatcher confirmed Monday morning that officers are on scene in Montauk investigating multiple incidents of antisemitic hate-crime vandalism.

Shortly before 11 p.m. on Oct. 18, “a large brown bag containing an assortment of women’s clothes” was brought to police headquarters for safekeeping after being found in front of the Dragon Hemp Apothecary on Main Street in Sag Harbor.

Mark Ripolone, formerly of Montauk, took a plea deal Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court, admitting to stealing close to $400,000 from clients over three years.

On Friday around 3 p.m., a man walked out of the Sweet Spot, the new ice cream place on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village, without paying for his milkshake.