Dan's Papers - July 3, 2009 - Second Wave of Street Vandalism Hits Here

In a world where the big news is celebrity sightings, giant mansions, the beach and fundraisers, sometimes some very important local matters go completely unnoticed. So it is that a second extraordinary night of vandalism in the community of Springs took place, two months after the first, in the wee hours of Saturday night, and once again, it barely made news except in the back of the local papers. The police continue to be baffled, but they suspect this behavior might be related to vacation schedules in the local high school.

Friday afternoon, the 19th of June, the high school in East Hampton let out for the summer break after their exam schedule. That night and early Saturday morning cars, mailboxes and windows were smashed in many parts of Springs, again, as happened at the beginning of Spring Break, involving cars and mailboxes along narrow and little used streets in that community.

In the latest wave last Saturday morning on Renee's Way, vandals crushed three mailboxes. Three mailboxes were smashed on Sycamore Drive, on Chrystal Drive there was a report of the back window of a car being shattered, and on Lincoln Street, a car's windshield was smashed. A window on the driver's side of a car parked also on Sycamore Street was smashed, and witnesses say they saw a light colored sedan riding up Copeces Lane with a person inside swinging a baseball bat at mailboxes there, causing three casualties. On Thursday night, the owner of a BMW had his car scratched with car keys. He had had damage to that vehicle on the night after the teenagers got out for Spring Break in April. Meanwhile, in Montauk, someone shattered one of the front windows of John's Pancake House on Main Street in that town and caused damage to a second.

Total damage for that night appears to have been 10 mailboxes, three cars and two store windows.

The earlier incident took place in Springs on the Saturday night of April 4. On that night, damage to either mailboxes or automobiles was done to more than twenty homes and cars in that community. Windows and windshields of cares were smashed with heavy objects, mirrors of cars were ripped off, some cars were vandalized with sharp metal objects scraping off the paint and at least on one occasion, there was graffiti spelled out.

These attacks took place in Springs on Woodbine Drive, Springs Fireplace Road, Gerard Drive and Whalebone Landing Road. Further damage of the same sort occurred within the boundaries of East Hampton Village on Cooper Lane, the parking lot behind Main Street and the Circle. In total on that night, more than ten cars were damaged, two of them declared total losses.

Police in East Hampton continue to say that they have no suspects in either this present case or the earlier one. It is indeed hard to catch somebody involved in the act of vandalism late at night on a narrow back road. Neighborhood Watches would make sense at this point.

We have a beautiful village in East Hampton. We should work together to protect it from this sort of thing.

From another perspective, it might be a good idea for Chief of Police and the East Hampton Town Supervisor, whoever he may be on the last day of school before the Christmas break six months from now, to organize a town-wide all-nighter on the back streets of Springs.