A 49-year-old Westhampton man was arrested Thursday in Peconic after he was found driving with a suspended license, Southold Town police said.
Police stopped Epifanio Cruz-Vazquez for a traffic violation at around 8:30 a.m. on Route 25 and found his New York State license had been suspended seven times, officials said.
Mr. Cruz-Vazquez was released from police headquarter on bail and given a later court date, police said.
An 80-year-old Central Islip man was caught driving with a revoked license after he and another man skipped out on a bill at a Southold restaurant last Tuesday, Southold Town police said.
John Rizzo and 47-year-old Harry Renck of Ridge were eating and drinking at the business on Route 48, but left when the bill came about 6 p.m., according to a police report.
The owner of the restaurant called police, and cops found Mr. Rizzo on Route 48 soon after, police said. A check with the DMV revealed that Mr. Rizzo’s license was revoked and he was arrested.
Both men were brought back to the bar, where they were identified by the owner as the guys who left the bill, according to the report.
Mr. Rizzo was charged with aggravated unlicensed driving, while Mr. Renck faces a theft of service charge, police said. Mr. Rizzo was released on $50 bail, while Mr. Renck was released on $150 bail, police said.
Highway patrol officer Peter Onufrak stands in front of the department’s new Police Interceptor cruiser.
The Southold Town Police Department’s newest police cruiser is now on the road.
The all-wheel drive Police Interceptor — based off a Ford Taurus model — replaced one of the department’s Crown Victoria police cars beginning Wednesday, police officials said.
For more information on the new vehicle, read this article that ran in The Suffolk Times this month.
Southold Town police chief Martin Flatley. (Credit: Suffolk Times File)
Southold Town Police Department data shows that documented criminal incidents dropped from 2012 to 2013.
But police officials said that the number of reported incidents may have declined slightly year over year in part because of an understaffed department that has fewer cops on the road, leading to fewer enforcement-related incidents like drunk driving stops and arrests.
Although the department is authorized to employ up to 52 officers, it currently has only 44, since a number of retirements have occurred and those positions have not been filled.
The Town Board has been in contract negotiations with the local police union for two years. No new officers have been hired in that time period. Supervisor Scott Russell said the board will look to hire five more officers once the contract negotiations are completed. The negotiations are now in arbitration.
“We’re down to the lowest levels we’ve been for a while,” Police Chief Martin Flatley said.
According to a police department report provided to The Suffolk Times, slightly fewer burglaries occurred in 2013 than the year before, down to 93 from 100. Petit larcenies dropped significantly, down by nearly 100 incidents to 187 in 2013 — the lowest reported level in more than 10 years.
Driving while intoxicated arrests and drug-related charges dropped slightly: 102 DWI arrests were made in 2013, down from 117, and 54 drug-related incidents were reported, a drop of three from 2012.
Chief Flatley said that while drunken driving arrests were down, he has noticed that more people are being arrested for drugged driving. In previous years, about 5 percent of DWI arrests were drug-related, he said. That percentage has ballooned to as much as 25 percent in recent years.
The drug of choice has also shifted away from crack cocaine to heroin, which has becomes more widely and cheaply available. Departments officers trained to make DWI stops have been trained to identify those driving under the influence of drugs, Chief Flatley said.
“If you pulled somebody over and there’s no smell of booze, but the person’s driving is horrendous and you think that they’re definitely under the influence of something, there’s a whole set of field sobriety tests you can do,” he said.
Eight robberies were committed in 2013, three more than in 2012, marking an eight-year high. Chief Flatley said that because few robberies occur in Southold Town each year, just a handful of individuals on a spree could inflate the numbers.
Last year, the Gamestop video game store in Mattituck and a gas station were robbed at gunpoint in separate incidents; police made arrests in both cases, the chief said.
The department report shows that disturbances and domestic incident calls were on the decline last year, dropping to 1,063 and 334, respectively, from 1,213 and 373, in 2012. Fewer arrests were made in 2013 as well, down to 405 from 434 the year before, according to the report.
Chief Flatley said he believes the department’s smaller size played a role in the apparent drop in arrests: with fewer cops walking the beat, fewer arrests could be made.
Chief Flatley said the department’s community response squad, for instance, was reduced to a single officer when other cops were transferred to different squads to fill vacant positions due to the hiring freeze. He noted that the department has been unable to pursue hiring more diverse candidates. The department has a clerk who speaks Spanish and uses a translation line for interrogations and taking statements.
Currently, the force also has three officers who are fluent in Spanish, though none is a native Spanish speaker.
Still, Chief Flatley said, having those officers on the force has already paid dividends, especially in the Hispanic areas of Greenport Village.
“Overall, the Latino population is not as forthcoming about reporting incidents as other people in town,” he said.
Having officers who speak Spanish makes it easier to investigate reported incidents and builds trust with the Hispanic community, which may encourage more victims of crimes or those with information for police to come forward.
“Just making initial contact with a Spanish-speaking person puts them at ease,” he said.
Chief Flatley said the department is actively reaching out to students at North Fork schools by hosting job shadowing events, and hopes to attract younger and more diverse candidates for the force in the future.
Though no new officers have been hired in recent years, the department has been using new technology to improve its planning and response to incidents. The chief’s office now features a smartboard connected to a widescreen TV; 2013 was the first full year the smartboard was in use, he said.
The smartboard allows police officials to overlay maps with instructions for officers. When Peconic teenager Ashley Murray went missing last year, for example, the department used maps to determine where officers should focus their search efforts. The department has used also the board to plan for parades and other events.
Chief Flatley said that the board can also be used for training. He pulled up a video from one of the department’s patrol cars showing a traffic stop and explained that officers can learn from their mistakes, as many athletes do, by reviewing the footage.
Still, Chief Flatley said, the department’s squads are stretched fairly thin, especially because Southold Town has become more of a year-round tourist destination in recent years.
About eight part-time officers are hired each summer to bolster the squad during the town’s busiest months. Chief Flatley said having a fully staffed department would only enhance enforcement efforts.
“The wineries are eating up the fall time right into winter and so many people are in second homes now,” he said. “Last summer was dramatic in how busy it was … Each summer’s been getting busier and busier.”
psquire@timesreview.com
A Greenport man whose license had been suspended eight times was charged with aggravated unlicensed driving Thursday, Southold Town police said.
Miguel Giron Secaida, 28, was stopped on Route 48 about 8:27 a.m. for a “traffic violation,” according to a police statement. A check of his license with the Department of Motor Vehicles revealed his driver’s license was suspended and Mr. Secaida was arrested.
He was taken to police headquarters and released on bail with a future date in court.
Southold police apprehend two Riverhead men on Main Road in Laurel Friday. (Credit: Michael White)
Two Riverhead men, one of whom was armed with a loaded revolver and has a long history of arrests, were apprehended in Laurel Friday morning after residents in Mattituck allegedly saw the men casing a neighborhood and trying to enter a house.
One of the men is facing a felony burglary charge after a woman said the man broke into her house and stole a bag of candy before leaving, according to a police statement.
Southold Town police outside of a Cadillac off Main Road. (Credit: Joe Werkmeister)
Police said they were called to Pacific Street about 10 a.m. when a resident reported a man who had knocked on her door moments before was looking in her neighbor’s windows and trying to open the door.
Cops searched the area, and learned that the man had gotten into one of the homes and was confronted by a woman, according to a police statement. The man — later identified by police as 46-year-old Kenneth Belcher — asked the woman for money, but she refused.
After she told him she couldn’t help him, he took a bag of Snickers candy bars and left the house.
Police located Mr. Belcher and 88-year-old Willie James Blackmon leaving the area on Main Road in Laurel and arrested them during a traffic stop, according to the report.
Police said they found the loaded gun inside the Cadillac sedan they were in.
Mr. Belcher was charged with felony burglary, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon, and criminal possession of stolen property, police said.
Mr. Blackmon was charged with one count felony criminal possession of a weapon.
Mr. Belcher had been arrested numerous times prior to Friday’s alleged incident on charges ranging from resisting arrest earlier this month to giving a false name to police to avoid getting arrested on an active warrant in 2011, according to previous News-Review articles.
The two men are being held pending arraignment in Southold Town court, according to the report.
A Riverhead man who was in Southold Town Court Tuesday morning for a prior drunk driving charge was arrested after a court officer noticed he had brought a knife to court, Southold Town police said.
Joseph Kess, 31, was due in court for a hearing related to a DWI charge from 2012, a court clerk said. Before the court proceedings began, a town court officer, Donato Cappabianca, found Mr. Kess was carrying a “large black-handled gravity knife,” according to a police report.
Mr. Cappabianca and Southold police arrested Mr. Kess and charged him with criminal possession of a weapon, a misdemeanor. Mr. Kess was arraigned on the new charge and released with a new date in court.
Kenneth Belcher (left) and Willie J. Blackmon.
Two Riverhead men who police say were caught with a loaded gun after one of the pair stole a bag of Snickers candy from a Mattituck home last week remain held in Suffolk County jail, a Southold town court clerk said.
And police reports show Kenneth Belcher — the 46-year-old man accused of the alleged theft — had been arrested for carrying drugs in Riverhead days before.
He now faces charges of felony burglary, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of stolen property related to the Mattituck incidents, police said. He was held without bail, the court employee said.
His 88-year-old alleged accomplice, Willie James Blackmon, is facing one count of felony criminal possession of a weapon. He remains held on $10,000 cash bail or $50,000 bond.
Three days before he was apprehended by Southold police, Mr. Belcher had been arrested in Riverhead for heroin possession.
Mr. Belcher was arrested last Tuesday on Raynor Avenue when police allegedly caught him with a glass pipe and an envelope “containing a quantity of a powdery substance” later identified as heroin, according to a police report.
He was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance and taken into custody. He was later released on $200 bail with a ticket to appear in court.
On Friday, a resident of Legion Avenue in Mattituck called 911 about 10 a.m., according to a police report, telling police that a man wearing a baseball cap and a hooded sweatshirt had knocked on her door moments before. The resident looked through the peephole but didn’t answer the door. The woman told police that the man was looking in her neighbor’s windows and ”walking around the house looking in windows and trying to open the door.”
Cops searched the area, and learned that the man had gotten into one of the homes and was confronted by a woman, according to a police statement. The man — later identified by police as Mr. Belcher — asked the woman for money, but she refused.
After she told him she couldn’t help him, he took a bag of Snickers candy bars and left the house.
Police located Mr. Belcher in the passenger seat of a Cadillac sedan driven by 88-year-old Willie James Blackmon that was leaving the area on Main Road in Laurel. The pair were arrested after a traffic stop, and police found a loaded .32 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver inside the sedan, according to the report.
A Southold Town police report also revealed that arresting officers found Mr. Belcher had a woman’s stolen drivers license at the time of his arrest.
The pair were arraigned in Southold Town court and are due back in court Friday morning.
Mr. Belcher had also been arrested numerous times prior to Friday’s alleged incident on charges ranging from resisting arrest earlier this month to giving a false name to police to avoid getting arrested on an active warrant in 2011, according to previous News-Review articles.
Southold Town police investigate a scene on Main Road in Laurel last Friday morning. (Credit: Michael White)
A Riverhead Volunteer Ambulance Corps volunteer displays the drug Narcan, which is used to treat opiate overdoses. (Credit: Paul Squire)
East End law enforcement officers — often the first to arrive at the scene of a heroin overdose — will now be equipped with Narcan, a life saving drug.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman today announced the start of the Community Overdose Prevention program to enable law-enforcement officers within the state to carry naloxone, known by the brand name Narcan, which can instantly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
Prior to the program, only the area’s ambulance corps carried the reversing medication.
SEE PRIOR COVERAGE
The announcement comes in the wake of a marked increase in heroin abuse and overdoses throughout Suffolk County, and follows the crackdown of two major heroin ring operations that reached the North Fork area.
The program will fund state and local officers with Narcan and train the officers to properly administer the life-saving drug, according to a release from Mr. Schneiderman’s office.
“As heroin use continues to rise, we need to engage in a multi-pronged approach to address the epidemic,” said Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone. “Last year alone, between our police personnel and our EMTs, Suffolk County administered Naloxone 594 times, saving the lives of those who would have otherwise overdosed.”
Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller said, “most of the time, we are first on the scene of a drug overdose. Having the ability now to possibly save that life is great.”
According to data released by Dr. Michael Lehrer, chief toxicologist with the ME’s office in February, heroin-related deaths in Suffolk County have increased by almost 300 percent in the past four years — from 28 in 2010 to 64 in 2011 and 83 in 2012, with about 82 deaths (and counting) reported in 2013. Not all drug-related cases from 2013 had been officially concluded at the time.
In January, state Senator Kemp Hannon (R-Nassau) and Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz (D-Bronx) introduced matching legislation that, if passed, would allow physicians to prescribe opioid antagonists like Narcan to individuals who know someone at risk.
This way, they say, family members, friends or others in a position to help someone who might overdose on an opioid can be prepared to intervene with life-saving treatment.
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also approved a prescription treatment making it easier for family or caregivers to save a person known or suspected to have had an opioid overdose.
The drug, known by the brand name Evzio can rapidly deliver a single dose of the drug naloxone via a hand-held auto-injector that can be carried in a pocket or stored in a medicine chest, according to the FDA.
(Credit: Times/Review stock art)
Southold and Riverhead police officers will be stepping up their patrols later this month as part of a nationwide effort to curb distracted driving.
From today, April 10, through Tuesday, April 15, officers will focus on distracted driving enforcement in observation of the National Safety Council’s Distracted Driving Month. The purpose of the initiative is to raise awareness of the dangers of distracted driving — such as texting and driving, police said.
The National Safety Council estimates more than one out of every four motor vehicle crashes involves cellphone use at the time of the crash. The departments will employ both traditional and innovative strategies to crack down on people who are texting and driving, police said.
“When you text while driving, you take your eyes off the road, hands off the wheel and mind off the task of driving,” said Riverhead Town highway patrol officer Dennis Cavanagh.
“That puts everyone else’s lives in danger, and no one has the right to do that.”
There are thousands of death each year nationwide linked to distracted driving, with hundreds of thousands of injuries, officials said.
A 32-year-old man allegedly damaged a New Suffolk home Thursday night and later harassed a Southold Town police employee, according to Southold Town police.
Adam Garcia of New Suffolk got into an argument with a woman around 7:15 p.m. and broke three windows and a door frame, police said.
After Mr. Garcia was transported to the station and charged with criminal mischief for the incident, he was later charged with “aggravated harassment of an employee by[sic] and inmate for his behavior while lodged at police headquarters,” a press release states.
It was not immediately clear if Mr. Garcia allegedly harassed the other employee as an inmate, or whether it was an inmate he also harassed.
He was being held for an arraignment in Southold Town Justice Court.
An Orient man who was stopped by police for failing to yield the right of way was driving with a suspended license, Southold Town Police said.
Robert Fischer, 25, was stopped on Main Road near Cox Lane in Cutchogue shortly after 8 p.m. Saturday, police said.
He was charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, and also cited for failure to yield and for driving with a suspended registration and no insurance, police said.
He was released on station house bail and is expected to return to court at a later date.
A 22-year-old Laurel woman was arrested Tuesday following a police investigation into stolen jewelry, Southold Town police said.
Amanda Olsen was arrested at her Peconic Bay Boulevard home around 8 p.m. Tuesday on a felony third-degree grand larceny charge, police said.
Ms. Olsen, who has no prior arrests, was released on her own recognizance from Southold Town Justice Court Wednesday after being held overnight at police headquarters. She is due back in court May 9.
Ms. Olsen was in the news in 2009 when she was shot in the head with projectile debris from a small-caliber rifle while sitting in a classroom at Mattituck High School.
A Connecticut man who was getting help from police with his disabled sailboat in Shelter Island Sound was arrested Sunday afternoon after cops learned he was wanted for a Connecticut probation violation.
Police said 45-year-old Shawn Eldridge of North Franklin called to report his sailboat was disabled about 1 p.m. He was assisted by the Bay Constables and Sea Tow who towed the vessel back to Brewer Yacht Yard, according to arrest reports.
While at the yard, police learned Mr. Eldridge he had an active warrant, according to the report.
Mr. Eldridge was taken to Suffolk County Police’s Seventh Precinct, where he was turned over to be extradited by Connecticut state police.
(Credit: Times/Review stock art)
His audience was a group of Cub Scouts. Their motto: Do your best.
And the children did their best to give Riverhead highway patrol officer Dennis Cavanaugh honest answers.
“How many mommies and daddies were on the cellphone as they were driving here today?” asked Officer Cavanaugh, who had volunteered to talk to the kids that day about law enforcement.
Most of the kids’ hands went up, he recalled. He imagined the parents were taken aback, perhaps a little embarrassed, but he wanted to make a point.
“Everybody does it,” he told the group, later relaying the story to me during a conversation we had about distracted driving and, more specifically, texting. “But we all gotta find another way to communicate with each other, because we’re killing people.”
I reluctantly admitted to Officer Cavanaugh that I myself have struggled to kick the habit of texting — or emailing — while driving. He wasn’t too hard on me. We all err, he assured me, while gently reminding me of the real dangers — the lives and families damaged not only by serious injury or death, but jail time.
I had hoped the birth of my daughter last year would have snapped some sense into me and get me to stop texting and driving. I was wrong. (Although I don’t text when she’s in the car.)
Of course, I’m not alone. In response to what a recent Riverhead police press release described as an “epidemic,” departments across the U.S. simultaneously launched a five-day enforcement and awareness campaign last week against distracted driving. The departments announced they’d be out in force to ticket distracted drivers. The campaign went by a few different names, including “U Drive. U Text. U Pay,” but all the local and state PDs cited the same data: In 2012, distracted driving played a role in crashes that killed 3,328 people nationwide and injured another 421,000. That’s more people than were killed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and more than twice the student population of the North Fork’s largest high school, in Riverhead.
The Riverhead Police Department’s press release reported that it would use “a combination of traditional and innovative strategies” to catch drivers texting or otherwise using electronic devices, but both Officer Cavanaugh and Southold police Captain Frank Kruszeski admitted it’s hard to catch people texting because, unlike talking with the phone at your ear, text messages are usually sent out of sight, with the phone under the dash.
“There’s no radar gun as there is for speeding,” Capt. Kruszeski said.
That’s the irony and the biggest challenge when it comes to combating texting: It’s much more dangerous than talking on the phone, yet much harder to enforce.
According to textinganddrivingsafety.com, drivers are 23 times more likely to crash while texting, compared with 2.8 times dialing, 1.4 times reaching for a device and 1.3 times talking or listening on the phone. Those numbers reinforce what local police told me, that the texting-while-driving phenomenon can’t be compared with the kind of driver distractions they encountered back in the 1980s, which were mostly limited to applying makeup, drinking coffee, changing a cassette tape or, a bit later, using a car phone.
But in the end, cops are there to enforce the law (and if you’re a young person, maybe scare you straight a bit with a stern talking-to). Their advice is usually simple, running along the lines of “Don’t do it — or else.” Officer Cavanaugh said he’ll sometimes default to the message of a popular ad campaign and teenage pledge movement: “It can wait.”
That’s the texting equivalent of Say No to Drugs. Sometimes it’s not that easy. Sometimes it makes more sense to avoid a certain group of acquaintances or a tempting situation than to actually say no.
So I’m calling on others to do what I’ve been doing the last few days: Toss the phone.
The idea is simple — and it’s been working. After getting into your vehicle — maybe even after placing one or two important calls and getting those conversations out of the way — toss that phone into the back seat, or wherever, as long as it’s out of reach. (The glove box is too close.) Like many of you, I rarely get phone calls while driving, mainly because people don’t like to talk much anymore. If the phone does happen to ring and I suspect it’s an important call, I can just pull over or get off the highway to answer. If the phone’s on my lap or in the center console, however, I’m going to text, sometimes even absent-mindedly — so it’s important to make sure my phone is nowhere nearby.
If you need a reminder the next time you grab your phone to tap out a few words or silly acronyms, think of those little Cub Scouts, working so hard to do their best in hopes of living fulfilling lives. We must do better by them, and all children, and their families, whose safety we put at risk every time we text.
Michael White is the editor of The Suffolk Times and Riverhead News-Review. He can be reached at mwhite@timesreview.com, or (631) 298-3200, ext. 152. Follow @mikewhite31
A 52-year-old East Marion woman was arrested for aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle after being stopped for a traffic violation Saturday morning, Southold Town police said.
Police pulled over Lucine Anne Kirchhoff at 11:36 a.m. on Route 25 in Peconic, police said. A computer check revealed her license had been suspended in New York, police said.
She was transported to police headquarters and released on bail with a future court date.
A 14-year-old boy drove an ATV through a vineyard in Peconic last Sunday to try to escape police before he was caught on Main Road, police said.
An officer was on patrol about 5 p.m. when he saw an ATV driving along the shoulder of Route 48, according to an incident report. The teen then drove through a field to escape, but was later found with the help of two other cops, police said. After learning that the driver of the ATV was a 14-year-old boy, police contacted the teen’s mother. Police turned him over to his mother, who arranged to have the ATV towed from the scene.
Police declined to press charges against the boy due to his age.
From left, Southold Town Police Chief Martin Flatley in January with this year’s Officer of the Year award honorees Rory Flatley and Richard Jernick Jr. (Credit: Paul Squire, file)
A Southold cop who was named the department’s Officer of the Year now has one more accolade under his belt: one of Suffolk County’s top DWI cops.
Rory Flatley was among 23 officers from across the county recognized for their DWI arrests in 2013. Mr. Flatley — who is Chief Martin Flatley’s son — was also honored in January for helping to save a drunk driver’s life after a Laurel crash last year.
“It is extremely important to us that motorists who are driving while intoxicated are stopped,” said Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone. “DWI tragedies don’t just affect those involved, they impact the families of victims as well.”
A Riverhead officer, Timothy Murphy, earned top cop honors with 118 arrests, the most in the county. This year’s award marks the third time since 2010 that Mr. Murphy has earned the honor and continues his streak of more than a decade near the top of county-wide DWI arrests.
Mr. Murphy and Mr. Flatley’s arrests were among the 5,692 DWI arrests made in 2013 and more than 15,000 DWI arrests in the past three years.
In 2013, 51 people were killed in Suffolk County by the reckless behavior of drunk drivers as compared to 47 the previous year. Although DWI fatalities have declined by 56 percent since 1979, Suffolk County recognizes that many challenges remain and will continue to be vigilant.
“Suffolk County will not tolerate drunk driving on our roadways,” Mr. Bellone said. “We remain committed to arresting anyone who chooses to drink and then get behind the wheel of a car, endangering the lives of others.”
Twenty-three county cops were honored Tuesday morning. (Courtesty photo)
The other officers honored were:
Christopher Drake (Town of Shelter Island)
Carl Schottenhamel (Town of Southampton)
Joseph Slack (Village of Amityville)
Steven Niggles (Village of East Hampton)
Micheael Gigante (Village of Northport)
John Galvin (Village of Quogue)
Sashley Jones (Village of Southampton)
Steven McManus (Village of Westhampton)
Vincent Rantinella (Town of East Hampton)
Michael P. Grosso (New York State)
Greg Sandbichler (Suffolk County Parks)
Brian Rasiak (Suffolk County Sheriff)
David Leath (SCPD 1st Precinct)
Harry Jos (SCPD 2nd Precinct)
Chris Anskat (SCPD 3rd Precinct)
Doug Nassisi (SCPD 4th Precinct)
Jamie Bustamante (SCPD 5th Precinct)
Anthony Legotti (SCPD 6th Precinct)
Brandon Neal (SCPD 7th Precinct)
William Murray (SCPD Highway Patrol)
Roger Kleber (SCPD SAFE-T Team)
A Cutchogue woman told police last week that someone had been helping her chickens fly the coop.
The woman said seven of her chickens have gone missing in recent days, and noted that she saw a woman steal the last chicken and run away to a house on New Suffolk Road, according to a police report.
A police officer spoke with a 25-year-old resident at that house, who said “no one has stolen any chickens that he knows of,” according to the report. The resident told police he would make sure people stay away from the woman’s property. The victim told police she only wanted to document the incident at this time.
• A Mattituck man told police he received harassing phone calls from a Smithtown man he kicked out of a band.
The band leader told police last Tuesday that he’s been receiving threats from the exiled musician, who said he would harm the band leader if he wasn’t allowed back into the group, the report states.
Police told the man to stop calling his former bandmate, and he agreed. The band leader told police he doesn’t want to pursue charges.
• A Mattituck woman called police Sunday afternoon to report a raccoon was in her New Suffolk Avenue driveway and “won’t leave,” according to a police report.
An officer came to the house and found the raccoon, which was “in good health.”
The cop guided the raccoon back into the woods.
• A East Marion man was charged with aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle after police said they caught him towing a trailer without a license plate.
An officer stopped 25-year-old Thomas Green on Route 48 in Mattituck and found his license was suspended. He was released with a ticket, and was told to wait in the parked vehicle until a licensed driver came to pick him up, police said.
• Someone stole an American flag from a 75-year-old resident’s flagpole in Mattituck last Thursday, according to a police report. The victim said the flag was taken overnight and that he didn’t know who had stolen it.
• Police and North Fork fire crews responded to four minor fires in the past week, including one at a Cutchogue school playground, according to police reports.
In the first incident, a Southold police officer was able to extinguish a kitchen fire after responding to an emergency call at a Mattituck house last Wednesday morning, police said.
Southold police and Mattituck Fire Department volunteers were called to the Sigsbee Road house around 11:30 a.m. after hearing that a gas stove had caught fire, according to a police statement.The officer doused the flames with a handheld fire extinguisher before firefighters took over the scene, police said. The fire department later found the cause of the fire was a faulty vent fan, police said. No injuries or other damage was caused by the fire.
Two days later, Cutchogue Fire Department was called to a garage on Granthwohl Road where a “pile of rags” had self-combusted, police said. The fire was put out before any property was damaged, according to an officer’s report.
A Southold Town police officer on patrol in Mattituck noticed a chimney fire at a property on Main Road that same day. Mattituck firefighters responded and doused the fire, police said.
On Sunday, police again got a report of a “smoke condition,” this time on the west side of the Cutchogue East School. A cop at the scene found that the wood chips around the school’s playground had caught fire.
Cutchogue firefighters were called out to the school and put out the mulch fire. While the cause of the fire hasn’t been determined yet, police said it “does not appear to be suspicious,” according to an incident report.
Those who are named in police reports have not been convicted of any crime or violation. The charges against them may later be reduced or withdrawn, or they may be found innocent.
