John Lombardi was arrested Sunday and charged with criminal mischief as a felony.

Southampton Town Polcie said the 60-year-old Flanders man told investigators he did it because of a “turf war” between commercial fishermen, some of whom he believes take in more fish than the law allows.

The fishermen who police said caught Lombardi told investigators that they watched him walk up to one of their trucks, look into the flatbed where horseshoe crabs—which commercial fishermen use as bait—in the back and then use a knife to puncture two tires.

The witnesses held Lombardi until police officers arrived and took him into custody. He was released Monday on $500 bail.

Detectives are continuing the investigation prior tire slashings.

Any organization granted a tax exemption for “social welfare” activity under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code can collect unlimited and undisclosed contributions but if the group is spending most of its money on political activity, then it loses its status and has to report how much it got and from whom, according to tax experts.

Last Friday, the FBI revealed that the IRS was focusing on conservative groups for further review of their tax-exempt status. News reports first said the targeting was done by IRS agents in the Cincinnati office trying to cope with a flood of applications for 501(c)(4) exemptions. It turned out that on June 29, 2011, Lois Lerner, head of the IRS division overseeing tax-exempt groups, had learned of the targeting and insisted that the search be broadened to all political and lobbying groups, but, according to the New York Times, the IRS branch employees kept it narrow.

The revelation provoked Obama to say at a press conference last Friday, “If you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous. It is contrary to our traditions.” He said that “people have to be held accountable, and it’s got to be fixed.”

Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that the FBI is “coordinating with the Justice Department to see if any laws were broken in connection with those matters related to the IRS.”

On Monday, two Senate committees, both run by Democrats, announced they’d hold investigations while House committees run by Republicans have vowed to do the same.

“The IRS’s actions are disgraceful, and [it] attacks the very heart of our democracy,” Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) said in a statement. “It warrants a full congressional and criminal investigation.”

Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) echoed his outrage. “I’m deeply disturbed by reports that the IRS targeted certain groups,” he said in a statement. “I’m eager to review the Inspector General’s report later this week. If some at the IRS took actions that were politically motivated, they must be held accountable, along with those at the highest levels of the agency. We must make sure that the IRS maintains its integrity as an impartial agency.”

In the 2012 election, Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) was in the crosshairs of millions of dollars spent in negative advertising by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt group. The advertising never mentioned Bishop’s Republican opponent, Randy Altschuler, but painted the five-term LI  congressman as a scoundrel embodying “everything that’s wrong with Washington.”

Rather than comment on what it felt like to be outspent by a 501(c)(4), Bishop expressed his concern about the IRS’ apparently politically motivated audits.

“I am deeply troubled by reports that some IRS employees applied undue scrutiny to certain groups seeking  tax-exempt status,” said Bishop in a statement. “The enforcement authority of the IRS was designed to operate independently of this kind of political pressure. I expect the report to be issued this week by Treasury Department’s Inspector General will be the basis for immediate action and strong, comprehensive measures to ensure fairness and impartiality at the IRS.”

John Gomez, who ran against Israel in 2010 on the Republican and Conservative lines, had the full support of Long Island’s Tea Party, he said. But he had an uphill battle trying to level the playing field financially.

“Steve Israel was sitting on $4 million—I had $50,000,” Gomez recalled. By the election, he said he’d raised about half a million dollars and had to respond to letters from the Federal Election Commission charging him with campaign fund-raising violations that he later overturned in court. He likens what he went through with the FEC to what Tea Party groups faced with the IRS audits.

“Strategically, it’s a way to slow these organizations down,” Gomez says. “You can’t spend time organizing and disseminating information because this is really what your purpose is: to make people aware that the government is out of control.”

Steve Flanagan, director of the Conservative Society for Action, one of the first Tea Party groups founded on LI more than four years ago, shared Gomez’s concern. “If any of these allegations are true, we’re talking about a serious abuse of power here,” he said.

Before the news broke about the IRS audits, the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, based in Washington, DC, sent out an urgent fund-raising request to its supporters past and present. One recipient was an 89-year-old woman who provided this reporter with her mailing. Among its calls to “provide critical financial and tactical support to principled conservative candidates at every level,” it said: “We can’t stand by and allow Obama, the Democrats and so-called ‘moderate’ Republicans to transform the United States into a weak, dependent, second-rate nation.”

From the wording above, it’s hard to say that this group is engaged in purely “social welfare.” But that’s what the tax-exempt battle apparently is about.

From a historical perspective, the White House has used the IRS to political ends for decades, starting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who employed it against Sen. Huey Long (D-La.) and Rep. Hamilton Fish, a New York congressman. During the Eisenhower administration, the IRS gave the FBI the tax returns of key members of the American Communist Party.

President Richard Nixon had the IRS audit muck-raking reporters who were critical of him, such as Newsday’s Bob Greene. And President Ronald Reagan used the IRS to challenge the tax-exempt status of the non-profit Mother Jones magazine, forcing one of the leading left-wing publications in the country to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend itself. It won.

Southampton Town Polcie said Stian Stiansen was found on the beach on the east side of the inlet near where the 45-foot trawler, Pauline, came to rest on the sand at around 2 p.m.

A nearby Sea Tow boat captain pulled another fisherman, 42-year-old Scott Finne of Eastport, from the water while Finne was clinging to a flotation device.

The U.S. Coast Guard Station Shinnecock dispatched a boat crew to assist Southampton police, a Suffolk County police helicopter and local fire departments that aided in the search.

Stiansen was taken to Southampton Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

He and Finne were returning from a fishing voyage that began in the early morning hours Sunday.

The Coast Guard will remove the boat and continue the investigation into the cause of the incident along with Southampton police.

The fatality came less than a week after the Suffolk County Legislature declared May 18-24 “Safe Boating Week” in the county as a part of a national program to raise awareness to the dangers of boating.

Congresswoman Pelosi commemorates the LGBT victims of the Holocaust at the “Friends of the Pink Triangle” ceremony at the Twin Peaks Vista Overlook, Calif. (Courtesy of Nancy Pelosi’s office).

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, is accepting an award from the Long Island Gay and Lesbian Youth at the nonprofit group’s 20th Anniversary Gala on Friday evening.

Also being honored are Edie Windsor, whose lawsuit challenging the Defense of Marriage Act was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in March, and Andrew Stern, the chief operating officer of NARAL Pro-Choice NY.

“We are thrilled to be honoring Congresswoman Pelosi for her decades of heroic leadership and advocacy on behalf of the GLBT community and people living with HIV/AIDS,” said David Kilmnick, chief executive officer of LIGALY. “This year’s honorees represent some of the most important voices in the movement for GLBT equality.”

Pelosi’s district office is in San Francisco, a leading city in the modern gay rights movement and the first in then nation to elect an openly gay politician—Bay Shore native Harvey Milk.

Pelosi, Windsor and Stern will receive the honors before a crowd of more than 400 local civic, political and business leaders at Carlyle on the Green at Bethpage State Park.

Democratic members of LI’s congressional delegation—including Reps. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola)—will be on hand to show their leader around.

Robert Liguori

A sex offender was sentenced Wednesday to 1 ½ to 3 years in prison for secretly videotaping young women changing at a swimsuit show in Southampton last summer.

Robert Liguori had pleaded guilty in March before Judge Barbara Kahn at Suffolk County court to unlawful surveillance.

The 52-year-old had been hired as a freelance photographer to shoot the “Hamptons Wine & Dine” event when placed a live video camera in a makeshift dressing room used by the models on July 12, 2012.

“We were fortunate the sponsor of the event seized the camera and turned the recording over to police and the footage did not end up on the Internet,” District Attorney Tom Spota said.

Liguori is registered as a Level 2 Sex Offender for a conviction in 2000 on federal child porn charges.

His sex offender designation may be upgraded from level two to a level three status, prosecutors said.

Robert Cleva shows off his Crasche Middie women’s lacrosse helmet.

Many years ago, Robert Cleva, who runs a commercial real estate business in Woodbury, fell off his bike, landed on the grass and hit his head. An avid exercise enthusiast, he got back on his bike the next day and wore a baseball batting helmet. Dissatisfied with other bike helmets and unhappy with his fallback version, he came up with his own design, eventually patenting a product for bikers, skiers and skateboarders—even police officers.

“People who don’t want to look like they’re wearing a helmet but want to have protection are our clients,” says Cleva, whose online head gear company is called Crasche New York. Last year they began marketing the Crasche Hat, which looks like a woolen ski cap (it’s actually 100 percent Acrylic) but has hidden “impact-resistant protective inserts” made out of polycarbonate plastic and padded with neoprene rubber and air chambers to cushion the shock.

Cleva noticed that parents were buying the Crasche Hat for their daughters playing lacrosse—especially if the girls had suffered concussions—and that surprised him. He had it tested to determine its effectiveness against the impacts of lacrosse sticks and balls to the player’s head.

“It turned out to be a very good product for stick to head but it was marginal for ball to head,” Cleva says.

In February 2012 he’d submitted the hat model to US Lacrosse (USL), the sport’s national governing body, based in Baltimore, where the first women’s lacrosse team played in the United States in 1926. The league itself has been debating how to address the concussion issue—a debate that Cleva inadvertently got caught up in. At first, he got an encouraging reply from Melissa Coyne, the women’s game director at USL.

“Your product complies with current USL rules for women’s lacrosse,” Coyne emailed Cleva in March 2012. “Hope that helps!”

But with the test results in hand, Cleva decided to redesign his product so it could withstand a ball speeding to the head at 78 mph and reduce the impact below the concussive level.

“We re-engineered it, and informed US Lacrosse that we’d made some changes,” Cleva says. “We opened it up—took the top off—because the girls didn’t want the skull cap, they wanted their hair [coming] out the top.”

He named the new model the Crasche Middie, after a lacrosse position. It resembled a head band, available in red, white, black, navy blue or light blue.

“It’s designed to rest on the head,” Cleva explains. “It’s attached to the goggles. When you pull the goggles down, it goes back with it.”

He’s most proud of the material used in the new headgear’s inserts. “You could hit the thing with a sledge hammer and you can’t crack it,” he says.

At this year’s January national lacrosse convention in Philadelphia, Cleva set up a booth featuring the Crashe Middies underneath a big banner proclaiming, “The future of headgear in girls lacrosse.” The future was short-lived, however. USL officials shut him down and escorted him out of the building. Cleva thought USL’s previous approval of the Crasche Hat extended to the Crasche Middie. He was mistaken, they informed him. He would have to submit his new design for approval.

“It happened to be seen by one of our rules committee members who brought up the fact that this product was different from the one that we had approved and this had not been approved,” Coyne tells the Press. “It’s significantly different!” She added that the Crasche Middie brochure “made some pretty incredible claims of its protective value, and that concerned some members of our organization, specifically our sports, science and safety committee…”

After Cleva submitted his new headgear for their examination, the USL’s rules subcommittee determined that the product was “deemed illegal for play.”  In their email to him, they said it violated “portions of Rule 2” regarding “Soft Head Gear…defined as any head covering without hard or unyielding parts that have the potential to injure another player. The product, Crasche Middie, contains hard inserts that are not unyielding which could possibly pose a danger to other players. Additionally, those inserts which [sic] are not adequately padded or appropriately secured and can be easily dislodged. They could potentially injure the player wearing the product or another player.”

Cleva was infuriated by USL’s response and wrote Coyne the following: “To claim that the inserts can come loose is patently false. To claim that they become a danger to other players is ridiculous.”

He sent them an impact test from ICS Laboratories in Ohio, which he’d paid for, claiming it showed that not only did his headgear pose no threat to another player it actually reduced the force of two players knocking heads if one wore the Crasche Middie and the other girl didn’t. USL’s Coyne was not persuaded.

“Parents are looking for protective headgear. We understand that,” says Coyne. “But we as a governing body also have a responsibility to make sure that consumers are protected.”

Coyne told Cleva that US Lacrosse is working closely with ASTM International, a nonprofit organization based in Pennsylvania formerly known as the American Society for Testing and Materials, to create a women’s lacrosse headgear standard. She suggested his company become a member. Cleva says joining would cost only $75, but he’s concerned that the terms of the membership could impinge on his patent rights. He is having his lawyer look into that issue before he signs up. Without a doubt, he insists, “My product will be the standard because it’s so effective.”

Of more immediate concern, he says, is that one of ASTM’s current members told him that setting standards could take two years at least. Any delay is hard for Cleva to take.

“How many girls who are denied the use of the Crasche Middie will subsequently suffer a preventable head injury?” Cleva wrote Coyne back in February after she suggested he wait until USL’s committee meeting in June.

The answer is that nobody knows.

A researcher at George Mason University, Shane Caswell, partnered with two members of USL’s sports science and safety committee to examine head injury incidents reported during 2008 and 2009 involving high school girls’ lacrosse players between the ages of 14 and 18 years old. Their study came out in February 2012. Gathering data from 529 varsity and junior varsity games, they found 21 concussions. Most of these injuries resulted from stick-to-head contact in front of the goal.

Coyne says that USL is constantly monitoring national research on the occurrence of concussions in the sport. “I don’t necessarily see that we’ve had this huge jump in the actual injury,” she says. “I think the actual diagnosis has been what’s changed.”

The girls’ game is intended to be safer than the boys’ game, says Stephanie Degennaro, who manages the Lacrosse Unlimited store in Miller Place. She played varsity lacrosse at Longwood High School in Brookhaven and at Stony Brook University. When she’s not selling merchandise for “the fastest sport on two feet,” she’s coaching and refereeing girls’ games.

“Basically women’s lacrosse is supposed to be a non-contact sport,” she says. “Everything is supposed to be finesse and controlled… Men’s lacrosse is a contact sport like football.”

Degennaro’s store does not carry headgear for girls, but she has noticed players wearing “these headband things” and “those soft foam ‘ugly’ helmets” on the field.

“Approving headgear is going to make the girls’ game more violent,” she says. “To be completely honest, I wouldn’t want to see the game go that way. Some of the girls out there wearing these helmets act as if they’re invincible. I would only want to give [headgear] to girls who’ve had prior concussions.”

One of those girls playing lacrosse with a concussion is Cindy Dreher’s 10-year-old daughter, Darby, who picked up the sport after watching her two older brothers play. The Babylon Village mother bought her a Crasche Middie because she had gotten a concussion from a serious horse-back riding accident last year.

“My daughter has dark hair so you don’t even notice she’s wearing it out there,” Dreher tells the Press. “It looks like a band for sweat. It doesn’t look like a helmet at all.”

Dreher had looked for a long time before she found Cleva’s product online.

“I had to do some research because what’s available for girls right now is this ridiculously stupid, soft helmet that doesn’t protect at all,” Dreher says. “They say it’s a ‘non-aggressive game’ but I don’t care because it’s got a stick and a ball, and those girls are very capable of hitting each other pretty hard with it…”

Lacrosse Unlimited’s Hauppauge store manager, Jason Sweet, a high school and college lax (lacrosse) player who still plays, thinks that giving girls’ more protection will change their game. “They might as well get gloves, too, and go out there and beat each other up like we do!” laughs Sweet, who’s had three concussions himself, but none since he started wearing a $234 helmet. By comparison, the Crasche Middie retails for under $30.

“I would say that most parents want headgear [for girls],” Sweet says, “Most players don’t.”

Cleva thinks one obstacle facing his product’s approval is growing tension within girls’ lacrosse about the future of the game.

“You have one camp that says, ‘Let’s put helmets on and protect the girls, and become like a boys’ sport. If it’s rough and tumble, who cares?’” Cleva explains. “The other side is saying: ‘That’s the worst thing. We don’t want the game to change. Leave it alone.’ US Lacrosse is in the ‘leave-it-alone’ camp. This is a big controversy, and I’ve kind of fallen into the middle of it.”

As of now only goalies in girls lacrosse are permitted to wear hard helmets. Goggles were mandated for all female players in 2004—New York State reportedly led this initiative—but now USL is considering whether the eyewear standards should be revised. “We’re taking a good look at that,” Coyne says.

Last week, Cleva got his hopes up when a USL official asked him to send his headgear to the rules committee at the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Then he learned that the USL’s own subcommittee, scheduled to convene this month, had tabled discussion of his headgear until June “when they can get the entire rules committee together,” Cleva says.

“Mr. Cleva has been told on several occasions that if he adjusts his product to fit the two elements that we wanted fixed – if he makes those adjustments—we are happy to look at his product again,” says Coyne. “But he has to address them just like anyone else. He’s not the first person to be rejected.”

Cleva has demonstrated the headgear’s ability to hang onto its inserts to Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) and to an aide in the office of Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford). He doesn’t believe USL is giving his product a fair shake.

“They’re saying it can come out and it can’t come out!” Cleva exclaims. Given the opportunity, this reporter shook the Middie as hard as possible for almost a minute and finally an insert dislodged when the head gear was hurled against the floor.

“When a 10-year-old comes to your office and her mother is terrified that the girl’s going to get hurt, it’s the human element that’s overpowering,” Cleva says. “We think we offer a very reasonable product that is going to offer impact protection and give some peace of mind to people and these people won’t let your daughter buy it.”

At Stony Brook University, the Student Activities Center was bustling with activity on a night dedicated to seniors graduating this May. The SBU Graduation Fair, held on March 26, gave students the opportunity to speak with career counselors as well as inquire about class rings and cap and gown sizes.

One of those in attendance was Matthew Ivins, a Shoreham resident who has spent his time at Stony Brook studying English and Environmental Studies.

When asked whether he would pursue a graduate degree or start his search for work, Ivins said that he plans to look into both alternatives.

Asked about finding a job in this tough economy, Ivins admits that “it’s terrifying and daunting,” but he remains optimistic.

“Still, if you work hard enough, I think you’ll find something,” he says. “It might not be what you want right away, but if you follow through, I think that you can eventually get to where you want to be.”

Ivins already has something to look forward to: his planned summer internship with a sports management company working with the U.S. Woman’s Open in Southampton this June. He credits his previous internship with the University’s athletics department for making it possible.

Internships and extracurricular accomplishments used to be nice things for students to have on their record, but now they’ve become a necessity, according to Andrea Lipack, the associate director of employer relations at Stony Brook University.

“Are there students who still graduate without them and find employment? I’m sure,” said Lipack. “But the opportunities that are presented to them are far fewer.”

Lipack, who works with more than a dozen other colleagues at the SBU career counseling center, estimates that only 30 to 40 percent of the 24,000 Stony Brook students on campus likely use the center, whose services range from engaging employers to organizing job fairs and securing internships.

“My biggest piece of advice is to be open and flexible and not stereotype opportunities,” said Lipack. “We encourage [students] to be well-rounded and to get involved outside the classroom, through experiential experiences or through those extracurricular activities.”

Whether high school graduates should attend college or join the workforce is up to them, Lipack says.

“There’s fields out there that are more vocational where a college degree might not be necessary for what they want to do and that’s fine,” says Lipack. “I think starting high school students with work experiences early is a good idea for that reason.”

According Shital Patel, an associate economist at the New York State Department of Labor, Long Island has had a high level of unemployment for several years.

But in 2012, Long Island showed a 2 percent job growth in low-wage jobs such as restaurant work or retail.

In Nassau County the unemployment rate was 8 percent for those without high school diplomas, and a bit lower, 7.8 percent, for high school graduates. For those with a bachelor’s degree, the unemployment rate is 4.9 percent. Roughly the same figures apply to Suffolk County.

“Your job prospects are better by having a degree,” said Patel. “Pursue something that you enjoy and also look at what other skills are necessary to gain jobs in that industry.”

Stony Brook University police spotted a vehicle that had been reported stolen being driven on Montauk Highway near the college’s Southampton campus at 8:22 p.m., police said.

When officers tried to stop the vehicle, the suspect sped off, then jumped from the moving vehicle near the corner of Middle Pond Road and Dellaria Avenue in Southampton, police said.

As the suspect ran away, the vehicle continued through the intersection, crashed through a split rail fence and drove into a mooring anchor post in the creek that connects to Middle Pond, police said.

Suffolk County police Aviation Unit, the Suffolk County Sheriff’s K-9 Unit and Southampton village police searched for the suspect, who got away, police said.

The suspect was described as a man in his late teens to early 20s with a light complexion.

Detectives ask that anyone with information about this case call the Southampton Town Police Department at 631-728-5000, the Southampton Town Detective Division at 631-702-2230, or the Crime Tips Hotline at 631-728-3454.

Quogue village police responded to a bomb threat at Quogue School on Thursday, March 28, 2013 (Rashed Mian).

The Long Island Press received a bomb threat Thursday from an anonymous mailer against Quogue Union Free School District in the Town of Southampton.

The warning, written in black ink on the inside of an empty white envelope with no return sender, stated in shaky handwriting: “I Left my bomb At Quogue School on Edgewood Rd.” A smiley face with two fangs was drawn alongside the message.

The letter has two postmarks, March 25 and March 26. It was mailed from Mid-Island.

Nassau and Suffolk county police were immediately contacted. Nassau police confiscated the letter and two Quogue village police cars were out front of the school on Thursday afternoon.

“With the assistance of two York State Police explosive detecting K-9s, the building was searched with no explosives having been detected,” Quogue Village Police Chief Robert Coughlan said in a news release. “Quogue police, Nassau County police and the Joint Terrorism Task Force are investigating the incident.”

Long Island Press received an anonymous letter threatening that a bomb was left at Quogue School.

Quogue School, which has 120 students, is currently closed for spring recess. The school instructs students in Pre-Kindergarten through Sixth Grade.

“Fortunately, children and staff are off for Spring Break and there is nobody in the building,” Richard Benson, the school superintendent, told the Press.

Local authorities have been on edge about such threats since Dec. 14, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The massacre is the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

News12 Long Island received a suspicious letter containing a bomb threat against Brookhaven Town Hall on Feb. 19. No explosives were discovered following a police investigation.

Timothy White

UPDATE: Timothy White, upon hearing that he was reported missing, presented himself to Oregon police.

Southampton Town Police are asking for the public’s help in finding a 51-year-old  man from North Sea on the South Fork who was reported missing this week.

Police said Timothy R. White was last seen leaving home for work at 10 p.m. Monday. His family grew concerned when he did not return home from work or call by Tuesday night, police said. They reported him missing on Wednesday.

He is described as about 5-feet, 8-inches tall, weighing 165 pounds with a moustache.  He was last seen wearing jeans and a white t-shirt.

He is believed to be driving a 1987 Red Chevrolet Pick-Up Truck with New York Commercial Plates.

Anyone with information on his whereabouts is urged to contact the Southampton Town Police Department at 631-728-5000.