Police & Courts

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Police arrested two men on felony charges of drunken driving last week, one in Montauk and one in Sag Harbor. Both men reportedly attracted police attention with traffic violations.

A resident of Harbor Avenue in Sag Harbor called police on July 31 when, just before 10 p.m., a man claiming to be with the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office knocked on his door and began asking questions about a woman named "Lisa." The man, described as "late 40s or early 50s, wearing a baseball cap and plainclothes, with a shield on a necklace around his neck," provided no identification and left when the resident said he didn't know Lisa. Officers canvassed the neighborhood but couldn't find anyone matching the description.

Lifeguards responded to what appeared to be two swimmers in distress a mile out from beach access marker number 14A on July 26 at around 4:30 p.m. A search on Jet Skis revealed that there were no struggling swimmers in the water — it was a 14-foot-long log.

Following an ongoing investigation into thefts from restaurants of used cooking oil, which is considered a valuable commodity that is frequently sold to biodiesel fuel refineries, two UpIsland men have been arrested. They are charged with multiple counts of misdemeanor petty larceny and one count each of third-degree criminal mischief with intent to damage another person’s property, a felony.

A head-on car crash on Saturday afternoon at the intersection of Montauk Highway and Cove Hollow Road involved a significant police, fire, and ambulance response, with two men taken to the hospital. Neither was seriously injured, East Hampton Village police reported.

AquaEye, the next wave of ocean-rescue technology, is here — and the Hampton Lifeguard Association is raising money to get it into the hands of town and village lifeguards. Its goal is $35,000 before the start of hurricane season.

Two motorcycle crashes, as well as one accident involving a pedestrian and another involving a bicyclist, were reported here in the last several days. All four resulted in injuries.

A 60-year-old woman with a Main Street address called police Saturday afternoon to report “too many airplanes flying over her residence.” She was advised to take her complaint to the East Hampton Town Board or airport management.

The story of the beaches last weekend was yellow flags and more Portuguese man-o-wars than could fit in a five-gallon bucket.

An automatic fire alarm in the butler’s pantry at a Somers Place house in Sag Harbor was triggered on the morning of July 12. Firefighters attributed it to “overtoasted toast in the toaster.”

Fourteen people including Abigail Disney, a great-niece of Walt Disney and an activist who supports raising taxes on the wealthy, were arrested at East Hampton Town Airport on Friday after blocking vehicles from entering or exiting the airport's parking lot for about 90 minutes. One activist described the demonstration as intending to call out "the very grotesque, reckless consumption of the 1 percent" and its impact on climate change.

A proposed amendment to the East Hampton Town code would allow volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers with two years of qualifying service to apply for a partial tax exemption.

Rip currents kept East Hampton Town and Village lifeguards busy over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, but this week the story was less red flags and more “elevated marine life”: Some 20 sharks, mostly spinner sharks but also threshers, were spotted off Main Beach on Saturday and farther off town beaches as well.

A 72-year-old Sag Harbor Village resident was taken by ambulance to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital on Friday evening for treatment of a serious dog bite. The man told police his dog had been fighting with another dog on Bay Street and he’d been bitten while trying to break it up.

An East Hampton Town police officer has filed a complaint with New York State's Division of Human Rights asserting that she has been a victim of sexual harassment and retaliatory working conditions, and has been denied promotions based on her gender.

On May 25, the day before a fire tore through Maison Close restaurant at 435 East Lake Drive in Montauk, David Browne, the chief fire marshal for the town, did a routine fire inspection and found 11 violations. Four involved improper use of electrical cords and three more cited overdue servicing of fire suppression equipment. In the official report from the fire marshal's office none of those were blamed, and the cause of the fire was listed as undetermined.

There was another shoplifting incident at the Balenciaga store recently, though nothing on the scale of the one last year, when an organized ring of five thieves made off with $94,000 in luxury handbags and led police on a high-speed chase before being captured. On June 25, a woman stole a $520 pair of sunglasses while her male companion was making a purchase. Surveillance cameras caught the incident on tape.

State Attorney General Letitia James has announced the sentencing of a Bridgehampton investment adviser to one to three years in prison for what she described as a “multi-million-dollar securities and loan fraud scheme that cheated dozens of New Yorkers out of nearly $7 million.

This week Senior Chief Nathaniel J. O’Connell relieved Master Chief William B. Harris, who has served as Officer in Charge of Station Montauk for the past four years.

A June 17 traffic stop on Pantigo Road in front of East Hampton Justice Court led to felony weapons charges for an Islip Terrace man.

After pleading guilty in January to first-degree manslaughter in the 2022 death of Kevin Somers, Marc Dern of Springs was sentenced in a negotiated disposition Monday to five years in prison and five years of supervised release.

It won’t just be birds, helicopters, and seaplanes trailing banners up above East Hampton Village beaches this summer — add drones to the list.

On Friday at about 1:30 p.m., police received a call about “a possible deceased human body” found on a beach at Montauk State Park. Officers determined it to be “the silicone lower part of a female mannequin.”