Hamptons Police Blotter: Halloween Rules, Pumpkin Riot and Lattes
Halloween Warning
In response to years of complaints, local officials have issued new rules regarding Halloween decorations. From the statement: “Residents are advised that it is no longer permissible to place Halloween decorations on homes if owners do not, in fact, intend to distribute candy on Halloween. The placement of jack-o-lanterns, images of black cats or witches and the like will be regarded as a promise to supply children with candy on the evening of October 31. If you decorate your home and fail to follow through with candy, you will suffer the consequences.”
Pumpkin Precautions
Extra police and equipment were called in to stand by in case a local pumpkin festival got out of control over the weekend. Police explained that this was a preemptive move in case rioting broke out. “Given events earlier this month in New Hampshire, we decided to be prepared out of an abundance of caution,” said police spokesman and chief pumpkinologist Lawrence Frick. Frick was referring to a recent pumpkin festival in the Granite State that was disrupted when gangs of drunken youths got out of control and began terrorizing festivalgoers, upending parked cars, and smashing pumpkins. To guard against this happening here, on hand for the local festival were an additional force of 500 police in riot gear, five K-9 units from states as far away as Minnesota, and several S.W.A.T. teams on loan from Detroit. It is estimated that this “pumpkin surge” will end up costing local taxpayers $1.5 million. In the end, the only incident that required police attention was when a 3-year-old attempted to leave the festival without paying for a pumpkin—a S.W.A.T. unit surrounded the young perpetrator and swiftly dis-pumpkined him.
Basic Brawl
A local café became the scene of chaos as a large fight broke out between two groups of young women. According to police, one group of young women was sitting in the café drinking pumpkin-spice lattés when the other group arrived. One of the new arrivals allegedly addressed the group of seated women in what police described as “a scornful manner,” making light of their decision to drink pumpkin-spice lattés. Her remarks were greeted with anger and surprise, but tensions were temporarily eased when one of the pumpkin-spice latté drinkers urged her companions to “just ignore her.” Soon, however, another of the new arrivals reportedly called the pumpkin-spice latté drinkers “a bunch of Uggs-wearing, pumpkin-spice latté drinking basics,” at which point the pumpkin-spice latté drinkers flew at the other young women in a violent rage. Police were forced to use tasers to bring the fighting under control.
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