Riverhead Town Police reported 180 criminal incidents and 130 arrests in January 2023, according to a monthly crime report released by Police Chief David Hegermiller last week.
Arrests made in January, according to the police chief’s report were:
Aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle (6)
Assault (2)
Burglary (2)
Criminal possession of a controlled substance (5)
Criminal possession of stolen property (5)
Criminal contempt (6)
Criminal mischief (8)
Driving while intoxicated (6)
Grand larceny (2)
Harassment (4)
Obstructing governmental administration (1)
Petit larceny (21)
Public lewdness (1)
Rape (3)
Town code violation (23)
Trespass (1)
Leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident (1)
Warrant (33)
For reference, there were 246 criminal incidents and 93 arrests reported in December.
The Riverhead Police Department changed its method of reporting arrests to a Uniform Crime Reporting compliant system in November, which counts every single crime during an arrest and criminal incident, rather than just the most serious charge or crime during an incident, as the department’s previous method.
Due to the change, Hegermiller’s report gives numbers for both “arrests by number” and for “arrests by subject.” There were 110 individuals arrested in January compared to the 64 arrested the same month last year, according to the report.
Criminal incidents in January included aggravated harassment (2), assault (4), burglary (1), criminal contempt (4), criminal mischief (24), forgery (1), fraud (6), graffiti (2), grand larceny (19), harassment (22), identity theft (13), illegal dumping (4), menacing (2), petit larceny (59), rape (3), robbery (1) and stolen vehicle (3).
Hegermiller told the Town Board last week that the increase in criminal incidents to 180, compared to 146 last January, was because of “criminal mischief complaints, petit larceny complaints and identity theft complaints.”
Out of the 110 individuals arrested in January, 51 were held for arraignment. Out of those arrested, nine were juveniles.
The town issued 1,175 summonses (including 304 parking tickets) in January. There were 2,805 non-criminal incidents in January, including four non-fatal overdoses. There were 77 town code violations issued and seven town code investigations conducted in January. There were 61 domestic incidents reported in January.
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