The Gen Z cop who didn’t recognize Justin Timberlake when he pulled him over for allegedly driving drunk in Sag Harbor is a rookie officer who’s already made a name for himself in the upscale town of Hamptons despite joining the force just three months ago.
Officer Michael Arkinson, who will turn 24 this month, stopped Timberlake on Monday night after allegedly seeing him ignore a stop sign and swerve into the right lane.
In his reports, he talked about Timberlake being unstable and refusing to take a breathalyzer test.
Interestingly, he’s so young that he didn’t seem to know who Timberlake was.
Arkinson wasn’t even born when Timberlake became a member of the boy band N’Sync in 1995.
In 2001, Timberlake was a rising star due to the group’s signature hit, ‘Bye Bye Bye’; Arkinson, the son of an electrician and schoolteacher, was just one of them.
But in the three short months he’s been on the force, he’s already become known for his attempts to retire, earning him the nickname “the Sag Harbor Nazi” and a “redheaded little idiot” around the Hamptons. rich residents.
Michael Arkinson, who turns 24 this month, of the Sag Harbor Village Police Department did not know who the 43-year-old ‘Sexy Back’ singer was when he stopped him early Tuesday morning.
Timberlake was taken to the Sag Harbor police station.
Spencer, a Shelter Island writer, is a driver who claims to have had an unpleasant encounter with Arkinson. He was recently trying to find a place to park before meeting a friend for dinner at Sag Harbor when it made a quick U-turn.
Arkinson lunged at him when he saw him turn.
“I was surprised that I stopped,” he said.
“It was low season and there was no one there. It was a dumb move. I felt like he stopped me just for doing it.”
Fortunately, he said he was given a “warning.”
But the second time Arkinson was not so kind.
Spencer was driving near Sag Harbor School when Arkinson pulled him over for talking on a cell phone.
“I explained to him that I was using speakerphone and was just holding my phone, but he told me I should have used Bluetooth,” she said.
He added: “I thought it would give me a break and I was driving less than 25 mph trying to get to the Y in East Hampton.”
Instead, Arkinson fined him $145, which he has not paid.
‘I only had less than 30 minutes to swim. It really disrupted my workout and my lunch plans,” she said.
“I think Justin Timberlake was a victim of overly aggressive Sag Harbor police.”
Another longtime Sag Harbor resident remembers when Atkinson was a traffic control officer and “brownie,” or traffic control office, before rising to the ranks of the force.
Justin Timberlake’s lawyer has broken his silence on the star’s DWI arrest and suggested there’s more to the story.
Pictured: Arkinson as a child with his father.
The local said that while he had never received a ticket from Atkinson, everyone knew where the cops would park on Main Street: outside the windmill and Murf’s Backstreet Tavern, and next to the local school.
And he wasn’t surprised that Atkinson, 24, had no idea who Timberlake was: “If that’s not your taste in music, how would you know?”
He added that Arkinson’s confrontation with the singer will surely be revealed: “If anything came to light, it will be all on the body camera.”
According to Arkinson’s report, Timberlake refused a breathalyzer on three different occasions.
The 6-foot-4 Arkinson played lacrosse at South Hampton High School, before earning a spot on the Roger Williams University team.
He started as a part-time traffic control officer while still in high school, in 2017, earning less than $15 an hour.
The average annual salary for Sag Harbor police officers is approximately $70,000.
In 2022, he graduated from the police academy and in March 2024 he was promoted to full-time officer in Sag Harbor.
Arkinson, who lives in South Hampton, about 25 minutes from the small town of Sag Harbor, did not respond to multiple requests for comment from DailyMail.com.
Arkinson’s parents also chose not to comment on their son’s big arrest.
However, they called the police, who warned the media to stay away from his house.
When the megastar was arrested, Arkinson noted in the complaint report that Timberlake performed “poorly on all standardized field sobriety tests.”
The rookie cop noticed the star reeked of alcohol, was unsteady on his feet and spoke slowly as he tried to retrieve his vehicle’s license plate.
Timberlake said he “just had a martini” and “followed his friends home.”
He also refused to take a breathalyzer test. Arkinson read an alcohol influence report to Timberlake at 12:52 a.m., who responded, “No, I’m not going to do a chemical test,” which Arkinson noted in the complaint.
When offered again at 1:07 a.m., Timberlake again responded, “I refuse.”
For the third time, at 1:22, Timberlake repeated: “I refuse.”
He was then arrested and transported to Sag Harbor Police Department headquarters by another Sag Harbor officer, Otis Cantrell, and appeared in Sag Harbor Village Court on Tuesday pleading not guilty.
His lawyer, Eddie Burke, bailed him out. On Wednesday, his attorney told DailyMail.com that he had left the Hamptons to prepare for his concert in Chicago on Friday night.
Timberlake’s case will return to court on July 26, but the star does not need to be present.
In January 2000, NSYNC released ‘Bye Bye Bye’, which charted in the top 5 of the Hot 100 and spent five weeks atop the Hot 100 Airplay chart. Arkinson was later born in June 2000.