Broward College safety guard and Davie police officer take personal property found on Davie campus

Here’s another story on how you can’t trust public safety personnel.

Broward College’s own faculty member takes home valuable, personal property found on Davie’s central campus. Safety security member Stephen Angiolillo was working the morning shift on Wednesday, Sept. 24, patrolling in front of building 1008 (nursing building), when he spotted an African Grey parrot.

The parrot named “Rocco” flew away from his Davie residence on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2014. Immediately the family went looking for him and started posting “LOST” flyers around town. Still young with not much flying experience since his wings were clipped before, the bird couldn’t travel too far.  With no luck with the flyer being posted on Instagram, I shared it on my Facebook page the day after we lost him. That’s when Angiolillo comments, “I saw him at BC today! DM me!”

Now I don’t know Angiolillo personally and I assume we are Facebook friends because we have mutual friends. Angiolillo use to follow and comment on my IG too. But here is where the story gets fishy. Below is proof on how Angiolillo switches up the story and how he still gets away with $500 cash in presence of a Davie police officer.

Notice how Angiolillo includes himself in the story in the first response but not in second response. The moment he told me about the bird shop, I called every bird store, pet store, pet hospital and rescue center in the Davie area with no luck.

“I just called one I guess you just called too lol.” Of course I did because you gave me hope. But you will see later that the bird wasn’t dropped off at a bird shop.

(alternative view of messages)

My boyfriend calls the number Angiolillo provides and speaks with him directly. Angiolillo says he works at BC and saw two students with the bird trying to find its owner (story changes). Once my boyfriend said, “If you know who has it, there’s a cash reward,” Angiolillo said he will look into it and gets off the phone.

Meanwhile, we go to the “Safety Office” on BC’s Davie campus and confirm that Angiolillo does work there and nothing was reported found or turned in. We ask another safety officer in the parking lot but he didn’t hear anything about a found bird. Right then, a private number calls my boyfriend saying they have the bird. Awesome! We’re ready to meet right away but the person stalls and stays he can meet in an hour max. “How do you know it’s your bird? Does he talk?” asks the private caller. Obviously my boyfriend is not going to disclose that information so the caller cannot teach him within that hour. “Can you send me a picture of him?” my boyfriend asks. “No I can’t do that.”

So you can’t meet with us right away, you can’t send us a photo, you’re trying to learn more about the bird and you’re calling from a private number? SHADY. During that long wait of an hour, we sat around brainstorming who this person can be. I check my FB messages again and Angiolillo is nowhere to be found. That’s right, he blocked me. That’s when I started thinking the private caller must be a person affiliated with Angiolillo or it was Angiolillo himself.

For safety, we decided to take two cars with three people in each to meet up with the guy. On the way there, my boyfriend gets a call from the private caller again stating he is at the meet-up location (which is the new Panera Bread on University Drive) and mentions he’s with a cop.

With a cop? Cool, now we know this person is legitimate. We drive up and WHAT DO YOU KNOW! It’s Stephen Angiolillo, the BC security guard that took found property from his workplace without reporting it, standing next to his friend that is Davie Police Officer L. or Kowayshung Chiang.

We walk up and my boyfriend asks to see the bird, which is in a large box on top of the trunk of the Officer Chiang’s car. Right away Rocco knows it’s my boyfriend as he caresses him and nicks at my boyfriend’s beard.

My boyfriend says he could only take out $500 from the ATM since it was past business hours. As he goes to pick up the box, Officer Chiang becomes defensive and stops him. “You think you can come here in two cars with all these people, smelling like weed, give cash and leave?”  says the Colorado-lover with his hand on his gun that’s still in its holster. Um, yes. We’re here for a family pet after all.

Everyone offers Officer Chiang to search them and our vehicles, but he declines. I stand by the car I came in and watched from afar since the officer seemed intimidated (two of us are females lol). Yet he tries to turn the story around on us saying we are being shady. Excuse me? We are just some 20-something year olds that came in a group for protection, not knowing who we were going to meet up with when we left the house. After all, this is a POLICE OFFICER and a SAFETY GUARD. Two people you would automatically expect to be good Samaritans because of their titles. Yet here is Officer Chiang telling my boyfriend to get more money out because the flyer said “$1,000 cash reward.” Now if Angiolillo wasn’t such a lying pain in the ass, he could have had the whole reward given to him eventually. How they split it is their business.

But I’m sorry Officer Chiang, the shady one was standing right next to you. First Angiolillo switches the story and misguides us to pet stores and other people, then he acts like another person when calling from a private number. And did I mention he took lost property from his workplace? I’m pretty sure that each campus has a lost and found policy, and out of all people, you would think a security officer would know it.

Anyways, after nine minutes of questioning, they’re still standing around not getting anywhere. “The problem now isn’t about the bird, it’s about you guys smelling like weed,” Angiolillo says. OK wanna-be police officer. Remember, you’re only a campus security guard and if you knew better, some of us are current BC students. “You just came up on $500, are you cool with that?” my boyfriend asks Angiolillo. He waits until he gets permission from both men before he can walk away with his bird.

The meet up

We came with a purpose to get our animal and leave and we were detained for no reason from these two unprofessional buddies. If Officer Chiang did want to search us, it was six against one and I would have gladly called backup for him.

Angiolillo gets his $500 and we finally get our bird. We take him home and notice that his wings have been clipped. Put two and two together and it makes sense that Angiolillo did go to a bird store but not to turn in a missing bird, but to clip his wings and buy him bird food. Maybe he was going to keep him? Maybe he was going to sell him? Who knows. All I know is that Angiolillo won’t be commenting “Cute” on my social media pictures anymore.

And whatever the universe wants to do with this article, then so be it.  I hope Broward College officials and the Davie Police Department sees this and understands the trouble we had to go through for something that could have been an easy transaction. Better yet, if Angiolillo followed the guidelines of his job title, this would have been even simpler—or an awesome rescue story. Instead, here I am blasting you, Stephen Angiolillo, on the Internet for some well-deserved embarrassment.

Officer J. Chiang (right)

Stephen Angiolillo

http://www.broward.edu/legal/policies/Section%20Template/6Hx2-1.15.pdf (section 6Hx2-1.15) is the closest legal document relating to this incident. Of course, I couldn’t find anything on the lost and found policy and procedure for Broward College online.