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Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to sign legislation today aimed at encouraging law enforcement officers to use peer support groups. Steve Hughes reports in NEWSDAY that the Lieutenant Joseph Banish Mental Health Act establishes confidentiality requirements for communications made by law enforcement during peer-to-peer counseling sessions.

Officers who respond to crises deserve services that are tailored to their unique experiences, Governor Hochul said in a statement.

"By strengthening protections for law enforcement peer support programs, we are ensuring safe settings for honest conversations to improve the mental health and well-being of our first responders," she said.

The legislation is modeled after the 2021 federal COPS Counseling Act, a federal law that established confidentiality protections for peer counseling programs in federal law enforcement agencies.

The confidentiality is limited to those officers trained and designated as peer counselors.

Proponents of the bill have argued police officers often experience trauma and grief as emergency first responders and the bill would make it easier for them to seek help privately from trained peer specialists.

Law enforcement members were 54% more likely to die of suicide than the general public, a 2020 study in the journal Policing found. In 2024, there were 13 law enforcement suicides in the state, including two Suffolk County police officers as reported by NEWSDAY.

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A new would-be cannabis dispensary owner has proposed putting a shop on the north side of County Road 39 in a small Tuckahoe shopping mall where a Suffolk OTB once operated and currently Goldberg’s Bagels, Melrose Pizza, Birdie’s Ale House and a barber shop do business. Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that the company, MRM Ventures, does not yet have approval from the New York State Office of Cannabis Management for a Southampton location but has begun the application process to the Southampton Town Planning Board.

At a pre-submission hearing last week, members of the Planning Board had few initial concerns about the MRM proposal, which would pose few logistical challenges in moving into a vacant unit in the 14-unit shopping center.

But the dispensary’s biggest hurdle may be that another dispensary has aspirations of opening just across the highway from them – which would preempt MRM from making a bid for a location in their desired site under the state’s retail cannabis sales rules if the other dispensary were to open first.

An attorney for MRM Ventures, Joseph Buzzell, said the owner of MRM Ventures already had a state OCM-issued retail cannabis license that he has asked the OCM to allow him to transfer to the County Road 39 site.

However, the MRM Ventures proposed cannabis dispensary is almost directly across County Road 39 from Club Ultra where the landlord has proposed evicting Ultra and replacing it with a cannabis dispensary named Southampton Deep Blue Sea.

State cannabis regulations prohibit two dispensaries from operating within 1,000 feet of each other.

One of Deep Blue Sea’s principals, Danielle Durant, told the Planning Board that property owners had filed an eviction request with the Suffolk County Sheriff's office earlier this fall and is planning to proceed with...