A Brooklyn woman says she was arrested, handcuffed and held for seven hours in a Bushwick precinct after police accused her of stealing rugs that she thought had been discarded and left on the street, up for grabs.
Jocelyn Ullman was arrested on July 15 after police got a call from Chyelle Milgrom, who said someone had taken $4,300 worth of rugs from in front of her namesake vintage store and cafe, Chyelle. But Ullman says she was ultimately let go without charges, and told her mugshot and fingerprints would not be kept on record.
Ullman says she never imagined she’d find herself in custody. The rugs’ rightful owner says she regrets ever getting police involved — setting off a chain of events that included the NYPD sending surveillance images of Ullman to local media, asking for the public’s help investigating a grand larceny, and several New York-area media outlets obliging with stories based on the announcement. And the NYPD says it was just doing its job by investigating a report of a felony.
To Ullman and Milgrom, the whole thing was a regrettable mess — a spiral of unfortunate events that began with a flood at Milgrom’s store, continued into a misunderstanding and wasn’t over for either woman well after Ullman was out of custody. But the case highlights the legal grey area at the center of one of New York City culture’s most ingrained practices: stooping.
Another woman’s trash?
Ullman, who is an interior decorator, told Gothamist she thought she’d found another person’s trash when she found sopping wet rugs on the sidewalk and front steps of a Bushwick building late in the middle of the night on July 8.
She said she’d been out stooping — reclaiming discarded furniture and other items left on the sidewalk (or in New York City, a building’s stoop). When she found the soaked rugs, she said, they looked to her like they’d been thrown away. A video she took at the time shows some rugs had been rolled up on the sidewalk, while others were draped over the railing along the steps leading into the building.
“I do this very often. It's a hobby of mine,” she said. “I refurbish things and I love to do it, it's fun for me. So upon finding these, yes, they were dirty and disgusting, but I knew I could clean them and bring them back to life, so I was so excited.”
I woke up one day to multiple friends sending me the news report.
Ullman said she was determined to give the rugs another life, thinking they’d be perfect for one of her clients.
“I actually made my client buy a steam cleaner to steam clean them, dried them, and did, like, a whole rebirth of these rugs, and then a full week went by before I woke up one day to multiple friends sending me the news report,” she said.
The NYPD sent media outlets a message with images from a security camera attached July — an “RMA,” or “request for media attention,” asking for the public’s assistance in identifying the person depicted in the photos and videos, wanted for grand larceny, for taking $4,300 worth of rugs. One shows Ullman taking a photo of a rug with her phone. Another shows her looking over a rug draped on a railing.
A Facebook reel by a News 12 reporter tells the audience: “Imagine dealing with flooding at your small business just to have someone steal from you a couple of hours later.” Other NYC-area media ran their own stories based on the police plea for attention, and Reddit threads drew more attention to the case. Ullman said she worried about her reputation.
The second they put the handcuffs on me, I was just sobbing.
“I was mortified,” Ullman said.
She said she reached out to an attorney, and decided that she would get the rugs back from her client and refund her, and the following morning, she would surrender herself at the precinct with the rugs.
“I was put in handcuffs. I had a mugshot taken. I was fingerprinted,” she said. “I’ve never been arrested. It was horrible. The second they put the handcuffs on me, I was just sobbing.”
Ullman said she was led to a room, where she remained for around seven hours while waiting to be processed, before being released.
“My mother had passed from an assisted suicide because she had a massive stroke, and she was a prisoner in her own body, and I just, I broke down at about hour five,” she said. “Like, I'm just having a small taste of this, and how horrible it must have been for her to have gone through that.”
The NYPD didn’t comment on the particulars of Ullman’s account. But a statement from a spokesperson said the department had received a complaint for a grand larceny and “we did our job to investigate the complaint.” The spokesperson said Ullman wasn’t mistreated, and referred further questions to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which declined to comment, saying the case was sealed.
Ullman said she wishes the rugs’ owner would have just posted about the missing items on social media.
“ I just wish that she had gone to the community asking for her rug back opposed to bringing the NYPD into a Black and brown community and involving news outlets,” she said.
“Bushwick is smaller than you think. It could have easily gotten back to me, and I would have happily returned the rug to her,” she said.
Rugs’ owner’s regrets
The owner of the vintage store, Chyelle Milgrom, told Gothamist she also now wishes she hadn’t involved police. Milgrom said she was “horrified” to learn that Ullman had been arrested.
Milgrom said the day she put the rugs out, her store and cafe had flooded after an appliance that carbonates water malfunctioned overnight. Milgrom said she spent the day cleaning up the mess, including rolling up the rugs and putting them outside while she removed a half-inch of water from the space. Milgrom said she also learned her neighbors’ business had also been affected, with damages that could get into the tens of thousands of dollars. A friend who owns a different cafe warned her about the possibility of mold growth after a flood, she said.
“I kinda made a decision when I left at midnight, which was risk leaving the rugs out on the porch and outside the store, or leave them inside and risk increasing the humidity and the risk of mold,” she said. Milgrom said she didn’t think anyone would take wet, heavy rugs.
But the rugs weren’t there in the morning.
Milgrom said she asked her landlord for the security footage from the front of the building. In texts shared with Gothamist, the landlord said he'd pull the footage at the police department's request if she filed a report with them, or he could refer Milgrom to the camera vendor to retrieve it for a fee. He said he thought that would be $250 — a cost she'd have to incur on top of those from the flooding.
“That's kind of what initiated filing the police report, it wasn't my first instinct at all,” she said. “ I didn't think that they would take this seriously. … I thought they would file a report, and that would be the end of it, and I would, I guess, have the police report number, and give that to the management, and they would pull the security for me.”
I don’t want to press charges or have anyone arrested, especially if they come forward voluntarily.
Milgrom said when she saw the footage, she believed the person taking the rugs likely thought they’d been discarded — but added seeing the person go up the stoop steps made that seem “debatable.” But she said she wasn’t told the footage would be shared with media outlets, or that police were intending to charge the person with a felony.
In a text to the detective on July 15, she asked if there was any way the case could be closed if her property was returned.
“My priority is just recovering my items, I don’t want to press charges or have anyone arrested, especially if they come forward voluntarily,” she texted the detective.
The next morning, the detective texted her that he had her rugs. The detective asked Milgrom to come in to sign the paperwork, confirming she didn’t want to press charges against Ullman. Milgrom said she didn’t know police had put Ullman in handcuffs and were holding her, and only found out when Ullman told her in person later on. Milgrom apologized to Ullman for the ordeal.
Milgrom said she’s been facing blowback online: In comment sections of social posts and on Reddit threads, people speculated she left the rugs out as part of a plot to commit insurance fraud, or called her “stupid” for leaving the rugs out overnight. Her store’s rating on Google tanked after it received dozens of one-star reviews.
Milgrom posted a statement to her store’s Instagram story, telling followers that she regretted ever involving police, and apologizing for what Ullman had been through.
Stooping? Or stealing?
Stooping is a common practice in New York City. But according to Steven Wasserman, an associate law professor at John Jay College and retired Legal Aid Society public defender, it’s one that has landed plenty of people in similar situations to Ullman’s ordeal.
“The question would be about whether or not there was criminal intent,” he said, citing a 75-year-old Supreme Court decision, Morissette v. United States.
Joseph Morissette had been convicted of stealing for taking and selling scrap metal he found on a Michigan bombing range in 1948. He told authorities he assumed the metal was abandoned junk because he found it in disorderly piles, according to the court record.
The Supreme Court unanimously reversed Morissette’s conviction, holding that the government couldn’t convict him without proving his intent was to take property that wasn’t his, and that his taking of it alone did not prove that.
The question would be about whether or not there was criminal intent.
“One of the critical distinctions involved is whether or not taking something on the stoop involved an act of trespassing,” Wasserman said. “ I mean, very often, whether that wrought iron gate was closed or open or whether there was a gate could make a difference.”
After reviewing the footage of Ullman taking the items, Wasserman said the rugs left on the sidewalk clearly appeared to be discarded, and it would be hard to prosecute anyone for taking them. The ones on the railing, meanwhile, “have much less of a discarded look.” All those details make a difference when law enforcement officials are determining whether a crime was committed.
Wasserman said police were following the law when they went through with the arrest, because it wasn’t self-evident that Ullman didn’t intend to steal. But he said it made sense that in Ullman’s case, law enforcement ultimately didn’t pursue charges after the owner decided not to, and that it was clear there had been a misunderstanding.
“What happened in this case was right, the property's returned, but there's no prosecution,” he said.
Wasserman said he defended many scavengers in his 45 years representing low-income communities.
“ If you want to know sort of advice for, for somebody, for the would-be stooper or scavenger or salvager — just look, think, make sure in your own mind, that this isn’t something that someone really means to discard.”
This story has been updated to clarify a message from Chyelle Milgrom's landlord that she shared with Gothamist.
