


Book him!
An NYPD sergeant was busted systematically dumping hundreds of pages of novels, religious text, and porn magazines onto a Brooklyn street — solving a mystery that has baffled and frustrated neighbors for years, according to a report.
Surveillance footage captured by a neighborhood sleuth caught the alleged serial litterer — identified as Sgt. John Trzcinski — tossing the pages of books from his car on several occasions before sunrise in Greenpoint, according to Gothamist.
“I think he was double-fisting one time,” said a resident who caught the cop on camera, and asked not to be named.
“I would estimate he had a box [of paper] in the passenger seat, filled that baby up, driving nice and slow – 15 miles per hour,” she told the outlet.
The tome-tosser was disciplined with the loss of one vacation day after neighbors also caught him in the act with the help of a private security stakeout, the website reported Tuesday, citing police records and interviews with residents.
Piles of pages — “meticulously” cut from books ranging from The Bible to an Edgar Allen Poe tale — began appearing on Noble Street four years ago, neighbors said.
The accused litterbug in blue allegedly dumped text from children’s stories, a book on Greco-Roman art, physics texts, and 1970s porn magazines, neighbors said.
The pages were generally found laying crumple-free and flat, often on Sunday mornings.
“I wanted to think it was some sort of disruption art project,” one bewildered resident said.
“We really could not imagine who would do this … It was just this shadowy mystery,” Molly FitzSimons, a former block association president told the outlet.
“Sometimes things would be underlined or highlighted on the pages, and we would try to figure out if there was a message.”
In January, a write-up about the bizarre litter appeared on the Greenpointers website, questioning whether it was due to some “weird fetish.”
“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,” the local news site wrote.
“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.”
A longtime resident soon followed the literal paper trail — by adjusting a surveillance camera at her home to capture the suspected culprit, she said.
Video showed someone in a car throwing handfuls of paper out of the driver’s side window on several occasions at around 5:30 a.m., according to footage and NYPD correspondence reviewed by Gothamist.
Another neighbor with ties to a security firm then arranged several overnight stake-outs, which identified the car’s license plate as belonging to law enforcement, the report said.
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On May 30, the NYPD made a littering allegation against Trzcinski and ultimately disciplined him by taking away one of his vacation days, according to police records.
Trzcinski, who earned $177,516 last year, now works in the NYPD auto pounds command, where cops who are not in good standing are often sent.
He was not issued a summons for littering, which can total up to $400, according to the Department of Sanitation, Gothamist reported.
Trzcinski previously lived on Noble Street in Greenpoint but moved to Long Island roughly 25 years ago, according to one of his sisters, who said the littering was out of character for her brother.
“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.
Reached by phone, Trzcinski declined to comment, according to Gothamist.
Deputy Inspector Kathleen Fahey of the 94th precinct in Greenpoint said the litter-tosser was a law enforcement officer but declined to speak about the officer’s identity.
She also declined to comment on his motive or how the department handled the ordeal.