Suspects Tamper with Hamptons Subway Security Cameras

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

The Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, was seen on the Southampton platform on Wednesday at 11 p.m. holding a goody bag from a party she had apparently attended that evening. Jennifer Lopez was seen on a westbound subway at 3 p.m. on Thursday heading east from Southampton. Jesse Bongiovi was seen Saturday afternoon on a westbound platform in Montauk. He is the son of Jon Bon Jovi. Also that afternoon, Alexandra Richards, daughter of Keith Richards, was seen on a subway platform in Amagansett.

BUILDING INSPECTORS RESCUED

Five building inspectors from Southampton Town were rescued last Friday at 4 a.m. after spending 17 hours in a long-abandoned Hamptons Subway storage room without anyone knowing of their whereabouts.

It began Thursday morning when these inspectors arrived at the Hamptons Subway building in Hampton Bays to tell us they were sent by the town to inspect the long-unused and very large storage rooms built adjacent to the subway tunnels underground in 1927 to house warehouse goods. Heavy steel doors along the tunnel walls give access to these rooms. Over a hundred of them are in the subway system.

When asked why they wanted to look them over, the inspectors said these vacant storage rooms are being considered as low-cost housing. As many as 12 locals could live in any storage room. When it was noted that there are no windows in the rooms, they said they wanted to look nevertheless.

At 4 p.m., Town Supervisor Gladys Steenbergen called to ask if we had heard from their inspectors. We said we hadn’t and they said they hadn’t either. Could we check the storage rooms?

Search parties were sent out and after that, the fire and police departments came in, along with the dogs. As time passed, everyone became more and more frantic. Sixteen hours later, on Friday morning at 4 a.m., the men were located alive but unconscious on the floor of a storage room between Mecox and Bridgehampton. After being resuscitated, they said they were very happy. In a corner of this storage room, they had stumbled upon a wooden crate that contained imported and carefully aged Johnnie Walker scotch. Dated 1932, it had apparently come by ship from Scotland during the last days of Prohibition. Unable to resist this special opportunity, as one of them said, they had drunk as much of it as they could.

All are home with their families now. The town awaits the inspectors’ expected low-cost housing report.

SURVEILLANCE CAMERA SHORT CIRCUIT

Hamptons Subway has a minimum of four surveillance cameras at every subway platform on the system (none in storage rooms, though). We keep a constant eye out for trouble, monitoring everything from our video screens in the Action Room on the second floor of the Hamptons Subway building in Hampton Bays.

Last Wednesday, apparently between 2 a.m., when we close for three hours of maintenance, and 5 a.m. when we reopen for the morning rush, somebody, probably teenagers, turned all the cameras to face one another. When our clerks came to work at 5, all they saw were the things being viewed by all the other surveillance cameras.

The sight of this caused three of our five monitoring clerks to suffer anxiety attacks and collapse on the floor. They were rushed to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and were released later in the afternoon. The problem has been fixed, but for seven hours surveillance was compromised and we were just lucky that nothing happened. If we ever catch who did this there will be big-time punishments meted out, let me tell you.

NO NEWSLETTER LAST WEEK

We apologize that there was no Hamptons Subway Newsletter last week. It was due to a mixup. Our typesetting is done at Hamptons Subway Headquarters in Hampton Bays. Our printing is done at Ajax Printing in Westhampton. A new intern was assigned the job of bringing the diskette we use for the newsletter from Hampton Bays to Westhampton. We use a very old technology which has long been in need of updating. In any case, the intern we sent out on the task never delivered the diskette. When last heard from, he was surfing in Hawaii. Well, there was not a whole lot that happened last week.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

Last week, though there was no newsletter, there came some big news from Montauk and I want to report on it here. A group in Montauk, petitioning with over 500 signatures, wants to change the name of Hamptons Subway to South Fork Subway.

Changing the name this way is ridiculous. If we did that, there are so many things we would have to change. We’d have to change all the signage, we’d have to repaint the names on all the cars, and we’d have to get the towns to redo all their street signs that point to the Hamptons Subway stop entrances. It would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And then, if we did this, we would be limiting ourselves to cover just the South Fork. We’ve got a spur right now under construction going up to Foxwoods Resort Casino. Everybody up there knows where the Hamptons is. Nobody up there knows where the South Fork is. And what if we put a stop in on the North Fork on the way to Foxwoods? Would we have to change the name to the South and North Fork and Foxwoods Subway System? I think we will not do this.

Montauk should just think of itself as a Hampton. That would be so much easier.