Greenpoint mystery solved: serial litterer was NYPD sergeant

Nearly every Sunday morning for four years, residents of a quiet block in Greenpoint, Brooklyn woke up to reams of paper dumped on their street. A serial litterer was precisely slicing pages from old Reader’s Digests, Bibles, junk mail and 1970s porn magazines before dumping them on tree-lined Noble Street between Manhattan Avenue and Franklin Street. Surveillance videos captured the driver tossing the pages from his car before sunrise. “It felt accidental at first, and then after a couple times, it felt intentional,” said Dillon Kraus, who moved to the block last year. Kraus described “hundreds, maybe thousands of pages” that covered sections of the street. In April, the serial litterer was finally identified to residents as NYPD Sergeant John Trzcinski. He’d grown up on the block in a family home sold in 2016, according to property records. An NYPD probe resulted in discipline for Trzcinski: loss of one vacation day, according to public records. He was not fined or issued a summons by the sanitation department, which can run in the thousands of dollars.

The slap on the wrist followed years of inquiries by block residents, a stakeout by a private security firm and the involvement of NYPD Internal Affairs investigators. Questions still linger. Why did Trzcinski, described by his sister as an “environmentalist,” do it? Residents – who devoted countless hours to the mystery in block association meetings, correspondence with the sanitation department and cleanup – were reluctant to talk about the litterer once he was identified as a cop. They didn’t want to be seen as badmouthing police.

Gothamist reviewed notes and correspondence with the NYPD and sanitation department about the mystery. Gothamist also obtained surveillance footage and photos of the litter, including pages sliced from Poe’s “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” and what appears to be pages cut from a book on Greco-Roman art. Residents described the repeated littering as “meticulous.” The pages of religious texts, children’s stories and physics books found regularly discarded on the street were perfectly flat – never crumpled or folded. “I wanted to think it was some sort of disruption art project,” one neighbor told Gothamist. Molly FitzSimons, the former block association president, recalled her husband frequently announcing on Sunday mornings: “The book bandit was here again.” “Sometimes things would be underlined or highlighted on the pages, and we would try to figure out if there was a message,” FitzSimons said. “We really could not imagine who would do this … It was just this shadowy mystery. “It made me just feel compassion for this person who clearly was processing something difficult.” In January the mystery appeared on the Greenpointers website. “I need to stress to those who have yet to experience this phenomenon with their own eyes the SHEER VOLUME of papers floating down the street. It looks like the work of someone with an enormous collection of old books who spends their weekend tearing apart pages before scattering them in the wind,” wrote a former block resident, wondering if the litter was some “weird fetish.”

A clue emerged earlier this year when one longtime resident, who declined to be named, adjusted a surveillance camera at her home to better capture the culprit. She shared footage with Gothamist showing a dark car driving down Noble Street around 5:30 a.m. on several different occasions as handfuls of paper flew out of the driver’s seat window. “I would estimate he had a box in the passenger seat, filled that baby up, driving nice and slow – 15 miles per hour,” said the resident, who also shared her correspondence with the NYPD about the serial litterer. “I think he was double-fisting one time,” the resident continued, describing pages thrown on both sides of the street.

The break in the case came when another resident, who has ties to a private security firm, arranged several overnight stake-outs, four neighbors told Gothamist. Gothamist could not reach that resident. But the stakeouts resulted in identification of the car’s license plate. Deputy Inspector Kathleen Fahey of the 94th precinct in Greenpoint confirmed that the plate helped police identify the litterer as a law enforcement officer. She said that the local precinct was aware of the repeated littering incidents, but declined to speak about the culprit’s identity, motive or how the department handled the matter. The NYPD did not respond to questions about Trzcinski, instead referring Gothamist to public police records. Those records show the agency made an allegation of littering against Trzcinski on May 30. The penalty listed is one vacation day. Department of Sanitation spokesperson Vincent Gragnani confirmed Trzcinski has not been issued a summons for littering. Litterers must be caught in the act by the sanitation department or NYPD. The city issued 215,000 summonses for littering from January to July 9. Fines range from $75 to $400. The piles of papers discarded on Noble Street also did not qualify as illegal dumping, which carries a fine ranging $4,000 to $18,000. That offense requires one cubic yard – or 202 liquid gallons – of illegally discarded refuse. While the Noble Street caper is unusual, it isn’t entirely unprecedented. A man who tossed hundreds of McDonald’s coffee cups for years in front of the same home outside of Buffalo was charged with throwing refuse onto a roadway and harassment. The litterer, a disgruntled former colleague of the homeowner, was ordered to pay $2,800 restitution, perform 20 hours of community service and faced a restraining order, according to a report in The Buffalo News last year.

The litterer discarded paper along lengthy stretches of Noble Street. Obtained by Gothamist

Records show Trzcinski now works in the NYPD auto pounds command, a common assignment for cops who are not in good standing with the department. An attorney for the Sergeants Benevolent Association said he could not comment on the case. Trzcinski moved off Noble Street to Long Island roughly 25 years ago, according to his sister. Property records show Trzcinski’s parents inherited the house in 1970 from a relative for $1. “He’s the kind of guy who would pick up trash off the street, not leave it there,” Trzcinski’s sister Ann said. “He’s an environmentalist.” “That just doesn’t sound like my brother,” Mary, his other sister, said. Gothamist reached Trzcinski by phone but he hung up. He joined the NYPD in 1994 and earned $177,516 last year.

Noble Street in Greenpoint, between Manhattan Avenue and Franklin Street. Reece T. Williams/Gothamist