by Paul Bass
Officer Silwia Pogorzelska could feel the bike owner’s pain.
She looked at the photo a woman named Jesse Huang was showing her of a cream-colored Linus bicycle. Someone had stolen the bicycle from the rear steps of Huang’s East Rock home. Pogorzelska noticed an orange Devil’s Gear sticker and a white basket Huang had mounted on the frame along with a seat for her 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
That morning, Aug. 25, before coming to work, Pogorzelska had taken one of her own daily 15-20-mile rides on the orange Trek 5 two-wheeler she bought in 2017. She worked extra hours at her waitressing job back then to buy the bike. She has since added a water bottle and phone holder as well as a Yeti sticker, plus one for a favored coffee shop.
“I would be very upset,” she thought when hearing the woman’s story, “if that happened to me.”
Huang reported that she had left her Linus bike unlocked on her back rear steps the night before. She noticed the next morning that it was gone. The thief had evaded the home’s motion-activated surveillance camera by entering the property from a different side gate.
Pogorzelska and other East Rock cops had been hearing about other bike thefts in the stretch of East Rock recently, as well as a break-in next door to the woman’s house. The woman told Pogorzelska that she didn’t feel safe.
“All right,” Pogorzelska told herself, “I’ve got to do something.”
This wasn’t a homicide. This wasn’t a bank robbery. This wasn’t a fatal car crash.
It mattered just the same. Pogorzelska decided she would work hard if necessary to get the woman’s bike back and make her feel safer.
With the help of colleagues, she threw down for two days and cracked the case, picking up some detective skills along the way.
Pedaling The Extra Mile
Pogorzelska, a 28-year-old officer in her third year on the force, said she takes the 15-20-mile rides through the rural part of Connecticut where she lives any day she’s not working a double shift. She enjoys riding so much that she volunteered to join a new bike-patrol crew Chief David Zannelli has started.
She started riding a bicycle daily back in her hometown of Bialystok, Poland. She relied on it to travel the three miles to school.
She started a new life in Connecticut at 15 when she moved to live with her mother, who had relocated here years earlier after she and her husband divorced. Pogorzelska started sophomore year in Newington fluent in Polish and Russian (and science and math), but not English. A turning point came at the end of the year when she had to write and then read an essay about Shakespeare to the class. She worked extra hours at night reading the original text in Polish, then learned it again in English. After she read the essay, Pogorzelska told herself, “If I can do this, I can do anything.”
She picked up more English working an after-school waitressing job at a Polish restaurant in New Britain, where her mom cooked. Pogorzelska also picked up a habit of working long hours: It continued in college, when she held down two jobs on the side. It continued when she joined the New Haven police force, where she like other officers often finds herself picking up extra shifts that extend the workday to 16 hours.
She decided she would work the extra hours, if necessary, to help find Jesse Huang’s bicycle.
Setting Up The Sting
Pogorzelska suggested Huang check Facebook Marketplace to see if her bike was listed. Huang did, and contacted the officer: She’d seen her “new bike” listed for sale.
Pogorzelska stopped by Huang’s house, looked at some photos. Then she parked her cruiser nearby and checked out the Facebook Marketplace listing.
The man listing the bike had a photo of himself with his hometown listed as Tampa, Florida. But he also had posts of other bikes for sale, all in New Haven.
Pogorzelska searched a database of criminal cases to see if the man’s listed name appeared. No luck. She figured he was using a fake name.
Then she studied his Facebook profile. She checked the list of friends, which included his sister. His sister had two separate profiles, one with the last name the man listed — and one with a different last name.
Next Pogorzelska searched the database for that last name and the man’s listed first name. Matches came up with a series of recent arrests.
She filled in her district manager, Sgt. Jarrell Lowery, who had also been checking in with Huang (as had her alder, Christine Kim). Lowery suggested Pogorzelska contact Detective Frank Grillo. Pogorzelska prepared an arrest warrant, then worked with Grillo on a plan to lure the suspected thief to a meeting.
Using an alias, Grillo responded to the suspect’s Facebook post asking to buy the bike. Suspicious, the seller didn’t agree to a meeting.
Then Pogorzelska responded using a Facebook account she maintains with her real photo but an alias. The suspect responded that they should rendezvous at the downtown public library.
Pogorzelska’s Facebook account listed her as living in Rocky Hill. Hoping to avoid suspicion, she messaged the seller that she’s not from New Haven — so could he provide the address? He did, and said to meet him at 8 p.m.
Since Pogorzelska works in uniform and drives a marked cruiser, Grillo and several other plainclothes detectives showed up instead outside the library. The man appeared with two colleagues, and with two bikes: Huang’s, plus a blue one that matched the description of one reported missing earlier that day to Pogorzelska.
Grillo detained the man. Pogorzelska showed up to make the arrest, on a fifth-degree larceny charge. The man told her the bikes weren’t stolen. Pogorzelska told him she’d need to obtain a second warrant then to take the second bike; he told her to go ahead and confiscate that one as well.
The man, who is 28 and lives in the Newhallville side of the district Pogorzelska patrols (District 7, which includes East Rock’s Edgehill/St. Ronan area), did not confess to the crimes. He was released on a promise to appear in court. He could not be reached for comment for this article. He has not yet entered a plea; he has a court date sentenced for Tuesday.
End of A String?
Jesse Huang was thrilled to get her bicycle back — and more pleased that cops worked so hard and so fast to catch an alleged neighborhood crook. Her daughter, too, feels safer, she reported. “The other day she was telling her grandma, ‘The police caught the bad guy and got the bike. We put it in the basement now. I’m very sad the child seat was gone, but my mom will get me a new one.’” Huang and Alder Kim commended the cops for staying in touch and then working hard to solve the case.
Police Chief David Zannelli called the quick arrest in a case like this a bedrock of proactive community policing, paying attention to all levels of crime: “Even though it’s not a sensational case, this means a lot to the person whose bike was stolen.” District Manager Sgt. Lowery said officers are looking at whether the arrested man was responsible for the recent rash of neighborhood thefts: He received reports of “at least five or six” bike thefts in Huang’s neighborhood with “the same MO” in the weeks before the arrest. He hasn’t received any reports of bike thefts since.
The case gave Silwia Pogorzelska a taste of detective work. She liked it. She might pursue a detective’s badge one day, she said. For now, she’s enjoying patroling District 7. Especially on bike.
Officer Pogorzelski: “All right. I’ve got to do something.”