Judge blocks Fishers Island Ferry District from reclaiming police barracks — for now

A Suffolk judge denied the Fishers Island Ferry District’s bid to force the Southold Town Police Department to vacate its temporary barracks on the remote island, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

The ferry district sued Southold in May, alleging its police department seized the property using crowbars to break the locks before ejecting people and property from the site. Southold has denied the ferry district’s allegations it forcibly cut locks and removed people and property from the house as “blatantly false.”

Acting State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Farneti ruled the ferry district “failed to carry the necessary burden required” to issue a preliminary injunction and pointed out a critical lack of evidence.

“To put it mildly, the Ferry District’s likelihood of success on the merits herein is in both procedural and substantive peril,” Farneti wrote in his five-page decision.

The decision leaves Southold Town in possession of the property at 357 Whistler Ave. while a $2 million lawsuit about the alleged illegal seizure of the property is litigated.

The town took responsibility for policing the 4.2-square-mile island, which is only accessible by ferry from Connecticut, after New York State troopers evacuated the post in 2023 citing unsafe barracks and other conditions. Southold police are using the Whistler Avenue property as temporary barracks while renovations are made to a nearby facility.

Farneti’s decision also addresses whether the ferry district has the legal authority to sue the town. The ferry district, established in 1947, is a special district whose actions must be approved by the town board.

Farneti said it is "somewhat perplexing" that the ferry district argued the town had granted it authority to sue over the barracks issue. Evidence to that effect is "conspicuously absent," he wrote. Lacking "a specific grant of authority to maintain this action, the Ferry District is without authority to do so," Farneti ruled. 

In his decision, Farneti also said the town board has "the power and authority to allocate Town assets between and among its departments."

In an interview Tuesday, Southold Town Attorney Paul DeChance said the town plans to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

“The decision made it clear what [the ferry district] can and can’t do,” he said, adding the town hopes the district’s board of five commissioners will “sit down and have a conversation, so that an understanding could be reached that would be clear to both sides as to what the rights and responsibilities of both sides are.”

Keith Corbett, an attorney for the Fishers Island Ferry District, still plans to move the lawsuit forward. In an interview, Corbett said Farneti’s decision “in no way alleviates the Town of Southold from the unconstitutionality of their draconian actions.”