NYC NOW - Stooping or Stealing? How a Late Night Street Find Landed a Brooklyn Woman in Handcuffs

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

A Brooklyn interior designer says she believed a stack of wet rugs left outside had been discarded. Days later, her face appeared in news reports about a grand larceny investigation, and she spent seven hours at an NYPD precinct before being released without charges. WNYC and Gothamist reporter Catalina Gonella traces how the misunderstanding escalated and where the law draws the line between stooping and stealing. Photo: Jocelyn Ullman Got any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm NYC Now producer Iirec, Iruik Panobi, in for Jenae Pierre. I was mortified. I just didn't know what to do all day. The rugs were not in my possession. Like, I was a nervous back all day. Today on the show, a Bushwick woman thought she scored a free street find. That is, until she saw she was being posted all over social media,

and being investigated for grand larceny. But first, here's a roundup of the news in our area. I had a pep in my step walking to work this morning. And that's because it wasn't hot, it wasn't raining, and finally, I wasn't breathing in toxic air. And it'll be like that for the whole weekend. National Weather Service meteorologist Brian Ramsey describes the forecast as...

A breath of fresh air. Ramsey says for the first weekend in a while, there won't be any rain. The air quality will be good to moderate, and the temperature shouldn't even get past the lower 80s. Fingers crossed, it stays that way. So what does a New Yorker do with a weekend this nice? Well, you could take the one train to the Upper West Side

to see the new Odyssey movie in 70-millimeter IMAX. Except both parts of that plan might be odyses in themselves. Your first quest will be getting a ticket. Showtimes at AMC Lincoln Square are virtually sold, out all the way through August 19th. That includes the early showings, like early as 6 a.m., and the late showings as late as 2 a.m. Not to flex, but I am one of those 2 a.m. ticket holders,

and I'm hoping not to sleep through my hard-won ticket reservation. Tessa Senders runs the NYC Movies Forum on Reddit, and she explained why ticket demand is so high. It's one of the few places in the world. You can see it literally the way Nolan shot it. You know, people say, the way Nolan intended. The Lincoln Center Theater is one of only 41 theaters worldwide, where you can watch the Christopher Nolan film in its full aspect ratio. Now, even if you do happen to successfully snag a ticket, your second quest might be getting home from the theater.

Major disruptions are coming to the one, two, and three trains for the rest of the summer. Starting this weekend and every weekend until August 24th, there'll be no one train south of 14th Street, no two trains south of 34th Street, and no three trains south of 34th Street, and no three trains. at all. This will be going on from 9 p.m. Friday nights to 5 a.m. Monday mornings. Officials say the shutdown is necessary so the MTA can replace aging mechanical switches. So maybe you can't catch that movie this weekend. Well, there's always the beach. And we have so many options, some of them even across state lines. I will always head to Jacob Reese, a rockaway beach from Brooklyn, but WNYC producer and New Jersey native Elizabeth Shue is a long-time Ocean City fan. I grew up going there with my family every summer. They have a

wonderful boardwalk. As she's gotten older, Elizabeth says she's in search of chill vibes rather than a busy boardwalk. And so she's been exploring Long Island beaches. There's Jones Beach. There's Robert Moses State Park. And there's also a fire island where John Giller owns a home. Most of all, there are no cars allowed. So that elevates the quality of life to an unbelievable degree. So there you are. You walk out of your house and barefoot into the ocean. And it's a remarkable kind of intimacy with nature. That sounds so nice. But other New Yorkers Elizabeth spoke to have different opinions.

Sheila Bligin lives in Harlem and goes to both New Jersey beaches and Rockaway beaches, but she never goes in the water. I don't do New York water. I don't do New York water. I don't do water when I go like to the Caribbean or out of the country. It's just ugly. Wherever you choose, local beaches are actually pretty clean and safe to swim in. The brown color is just from sediment in the water.

You can read Elizabeth's column on the Battle of the Beaches in the Gothamist newsletter, Loopedin, NYC. You can sign up for that at gotthmus.com slash looped in. LeBron James is headed back east. No, not to the reigning NBA champs, the New York Knicks, but to their division rivals, the Philadelphia 76ers. Whatever, it's still Nixen 5. The team's championship trophy goes on display at the Museum of Natural. history starting Monday. You'll join other sports memorabilia made from precious medals in the museum's

For the Win exhibit. Yeah, I am a very curious to explore the other gems. I've come here pretty often. Jenae and I went to the For the Win exhibit earlier this year, and we met curator Vicky Tobach. We got to see a Nick's championship ring from 1973. You know, this Knicks, Red Holesman ring, and as you can see here, it's pretty humble when you compare it to the rings that you see now.

The head coach's ring was pretty cool, but it looked a little lonely. I'm glad it'll have some company. Next, some unfortunate news from Queens. The Ozone Park neighborhood is mourning Sergeant Angel S. Rampersad after the 28-year-old soldier was killed in an air base in Jordan. Rampersad was born in Trinidad and moved to the States when she was two.

Her mother, Carol Acevedo, says that her daughter loves loved being in the Army, and she knew from a young age that she wanted to serve in her adopted homes military. She fought for this country and she died for this country. And I am a mother. It is highly proud of her. And I know she was really, really focused on what she was doing. The community will be hosting a vigil on Monday night at 7 outside the family's home on 133rd Avenue.

A Bushwick stoop find turned into a police manhunt. After the break, we look into what the law says about the age-old tradition of stooping. In New York, the sidewalk has its own economy. It's basically Facebook marketplace without the messages. A lamp, a dresser, even a whole couch can disappear minutes after someone puts it out. But what happens when something looks discarded to one person and the owner says it's not? A Brooklyn woman says her late-night fine ended with her in handcuffs and held at an NYP. precinct for seven hours.

She was ultimately released without charges. My colleague Jena A Pierre spoke with WNYC and Gothamist reporter Catalina Gonella about how the misunderstanding spiraled and where the law draws the line between stooping and stealing. So what happened here? Okay, so I'm going to tell you the story starting with Jocelyn Ollman's perspective. That's the person who found these rugs in Bushwick. She's an interior designer and she says stooping is. a hobby of hers.

I do this very often. I refurbish things and I love to do it. It's fun for me. So stooping is basically when people passing by eyes something on someone else's curb that they like and they take it home. Exactly. That's what Jocelyn says that she was doing. So why don't you tell me the story from the start from your perspective and we'll go from there.

Okay. So I was out late one night stooping. And I noticed three really disheveled rugs in the middle of the sidewalk, which I have a video of me walking up to as well. Once I walked up, I noticed there were more dirty rugs on the railing, and I just took them home for my client. I mean, they were really heavy, disgusting in wet. So she thought this was trash. Right. So Jocelyn spots these rugs outside of a building in Bushwick.

And I watched a video actually that she took. Some of them are on the sidewalk. A few others are on the railing of the stairs going into this building. She said she was excited. She thought that they were perfect for one of her clients. And so she starts the process of taking them back home. I actually made my client buy a steam cleaner to steam clean them, dried them, and did like a whole rebirth of these rugs.

Okay, so at this point, she thinks she has hit the jackpot with these rugs. How did she find out that the rugs weren't actually up for grabs? She says she was pretty shocked one day when she woke up to texts from friends everywhere, even across the country, who said they had seen images of her on the news. It was a story about police looking for someone who had stolen rugs from in front of a vintage store, and it had this security camera footage of her taking the rugs. And police said that they were looking for someone in connection with a grand larceny. And I was mortified.

I just didn't know what to do all day. The rugs were not in my possession. So I was contacting my client who was busy at work and wasn't getting back to me. So I was just very, like I was a nervous back all day. So news reports, grand larceny, all of this for rugs? Right. Well, these were antique rugs. They were actually worth $4,300 according to these police reports. So that does constitute a grand larceny if they were stolen. Waking up to your own face and news reports about a grand larceny is not the way someone would want to wake up.

How did this escalate from a misunderstanding? to an actual police case. Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to know. So I reached out to the vintage store owner. Her name is Shail Milgram. And she told me that the day that she put the rugs out, her store had flooded. It's actually also a cafe. And one of the machines there malfunctioned and spewed water everywhere overnight.

So when she got to the cafe, one of the first things she did was get those rugs out of there so that she could start cleaning. And she spends the whole day cleaning and also dealing with her neighbors who had also been flooded. And by the end of the day, it's midnight. She says that she was exhausted and decided to risk leaving the rugs out overnight, thinking no one would take these really heavy, sopping wet rugs. But when she got back in the morning, they were gone. So she reached out to her landlord. to see the security camera footage.

But he tells her, you know, the only way I will look into that is if you give me a police report. Otherwise, you can just reach out to the camera vendor yourself. It might cost you $250. And she's already worried about all the money that the flood is going to cost her. So she decides her best option is to just file the police report in order to get that camera footage. And she actually showed me a text where she was asking the, detective on the case to not arrest anybody or not charge anybody the night before Jocelyn ended up in the precinct.

But I mean, ultimately, that's what police reports are for. Right. She's called herself naive about that. And she expected to have a little bit more of a say and how that would go. But she says she's also, you know, at the same time dealing with all of the consequences of the flood. And so it just kind of seems like how the police investigation would end up wasn't the top of her mind. Wow. So all of this was just blown up.

Right. And police ended up taking it on and putting out a request for media attention. It included those images from the security camera. And they were asking for the public's help in identifying the person in the footage. So that's how it ended up on the news and social media. Yeah, and how Olman's friends ultimately ended up telling her about it. Exactly. So the cops didn't actually have to pull up at Olman's home. She actually brought the rugs back. She went to the precinct voluntarily.

What happens when she gets there? She says that when she saw the news footage, she knew that that's what she was going to do. she never meant to take anybody's property is what she told me. I contacted my lawyer immediately, and I agreed to surrender the next morning with all of the rugs. Mind you, cleaned, dry, and rolled up beautifully for her. I was held for seven hours. At that point, Shiel, the store owner, had decided not to press charges, and she actually had to go to the precinct and sign a form saying that.

Why was she held there for seven hours if the charges were dropped? When an arrest has been made, that also means that the district attorney needs to decide whether or not they're going to press charges. So typically you have to wait for that to happen. Ultimately, the Brooklyn DA also decided not to press charges. But it's not just that. You know, her face like we mentioned was plastered all over at this point, not just the news, but also social media and people talking about it on social media. is like Instagram and Reddit. I asked the NYPD about all of this, and they gave me very limited comment, but they said that

they were asked to investigate a grand larceny and that they did their job. They also stressed that she hadn't been mistreated. The police also referred us to the Brooklyn DA for any further information, but the Brooklyn DA wouldn't comment because they said that the case is sealed. And now Shail says she actually didn't find out that Jocelyn had been arrested and held in the precinct until afterwards when Jocelyn went and they had a conversation in person. And she says she felt horrible when she found out and that she wishes she had never involved the police and figured something else out instead. Yeah, man, things really escalated here. Should New Yorkers think twice before hauling home?

that suspiciously nice chair or that really cool looking couch? Like, when does stooping cross the line into stealing? I had the same question. You know, I have a lovely stained glass lamp in my living room that now I wonder if it was someone's property. But, you know, I reached out to Stephen Wasserman about this. He's an associate professor of law at John Jay College and a retired legal aid society public defender. And he says that he's defended many cases like this throughout his 45 years in the profession. And he actually says that it comes down to whether or not it can be proven that there was criminal intent. Do the police have the discretion to say like, oh, this looks like it may be a misunderstanding. Let's think about how else you can get these rugs back? Well, you know,

there is a division of labor between the police and the prosecutors. And in order to make an arrest, you need probable cause, which means just, you know, more likely than not that a person committed a crime. In this case, the question would be about whether or not there was criminal intent. He cited a 75-year-old Supreme Court case about a man who had been convicted of stealing scrap metal from a field, which he told authorities that he believed had been tried. In the early 1950s, it's called United States against Morissette. The Supreme Court in that case reversed the conviction, and they said that the government couldn't convict him without proving his intent was to take the property that wasn't his, and that his taking of it alone did not prove that.

I actually showed him footage that Jocelyn had taken when she found the rugs, and, you know, I mentioned some were on the sidewalk and others were on the railing. And he said that in this case, you could argue that the rugs on the sidewalk that were rolled up looked very discarded. But then the rugs on the railing, those might look a little bit less discarded. And all of those details would matter if law enforcement was going to press charges over this if you were trying to prove that criminal intent. But ultimately, you know, Shiael, the owner of the store, didn't press any charges and neither did the DA. And Jocelyn returned the rugs. So.

Yeah. So any advice for folks going out stooping this weekend? It's usually a hobby of mine I like to do. But now I'm a bit hesitant. I've got to be honest. Yeah. So he said that the best thing to do is sort of ask yourself how sure you are that the items that you're taking are being trashed, you know. Really look at where they're placed, if there's any signs.

and just ask yourself how sure you are and if you have any way of making sure. Make sure that this is something that someone really means to discord. You really have just got to look at the circumstances. Now, you know, if she had taken a FedEx package from the same place, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Okay, I'll try my best. Me too. That's WNYC and Gothamist reporter Catalina Gonella speaking with my colleague Jena Pierre.

Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. I'm Eurek Panobi. Have a great weekend.