Block Island’s police chief describes the summer of 2026 as “pretty uneventful,” which on an island that swells to a hundred times its winter population counts as a good review.
Chief Paul Deane gave the season assessment to the Town Council, reported by Renee Meyer in The Block Island Times on August 21. Victory Day weekend was quiet. And the number that says the most: “We’ve written maybe three open container tickets all summer.”
Deane traces it to a change in who comes. “Seeing people coming here as a family, towing the wagon with their beach stuff,” he said. “It’s not Las Vegas anymore.”
That is a real shift for anyone who remembers the island’s reputation twenty years ago, and it happened while the department was short-handed. Block Island had six community service officers last summer and three this year, which cut into traffic management at Bridgegate Square. Council members raised taxis rolling through the stop signs there and drivers loading and unloading in the parking lots. Asked about posting someone to direct traffic, Deane said a previous attempt “made a bigger mess.”
One thing that did work was cheap. A social media campaign before the Fourth of July warning about underage drinking pulled what Deane put at 1.5 million total views across the posts — for a town of about a thousand year-round residents.
Deane also credited Ballard’s owner Steven Filippi for changes at the Water Street property: “He’s done a really good job of turning his business around.” Ballard’s is an advertiser on this site; we are quoting the police chief, not the owner.
The read: the island got quieter on purpose, and it got there with half the summer staff. Whether three CSOs is a plan or a budget outcome is a question for the next council meeting.