OLD SAYBROOK, Conn. — The Old Saybrook police officer that was arrested earlier this month for allegedly stalking a woman using a police database appeared in court on Tuesday.
Patrolman Josh Zarbo was placed on administrative leave and his law enforcement authority was taken away after police launched two investigations - an administrative one and a criminal one - into the allegations.
The officer was accused of illegally accessing the Connecticut On-Line Law Enforcement Teleprocessing system in order to get information on a woman he saw in a parking lot.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges in Middlesex Superior Court on Tuesday.
According to the arrest warrant, Zarbo was working a security detail at a Walmart during Black Friday when allegedly saw two women shopping at the shore. When the two women got into their vehicle, Zarbo radioed in to dispatch to run the license plate.
Zarbo then looked up the woman and added her on Instagram.
A friend of the woman overheard her name over the scanner and reached out via text to make her aware that her license plate had been run.
"I was surprised by that but I know that my plate can be run for any reason so it didn't really alarm me," the woman told police, according to the arrest warrant. "I figured that maybe police were running players in the parking lot to make sure no one in Walmart was stealing."
The woman told police that she then received an Instagram follow request from a "Josh Zarbo," who she did not know and did not recall meeting. A mutual friend told her that Zarbo was an Old Saybrook police officer.
"It was clear to me that he got my name by running my plate," the woman told police. "If he just asked me, I would have given it to him."
Zarbo told police that he ran the license plate because the two women seemed suspicious, the arrest warrant said.
He said that the name sounded familiar to him and it was later that he looked her up on social media and noticed they had several mutual friends. He sent the Instagram request after.
According to the arrest warrant, Zarbo requested the license plate to be run via a text message to an Old Saybrook dispatcher on his personal phone before making the request over the radio. Police said this is not standard department procedure.
Police said it took Zarbo, who denied writing down the number, more than 17 minutes between when the woman's car drove away from the store to when he made a request to run her plate.
Aside from the Instagram request, there was no other contact between Zarbo and the victim.
Old Saybrook police charged Zarbos with Computer Crime in the Third degree, which is a Class D Felony, for illegally accessing the Connecticut On-Line Law Enforcement Teleprocessing (COLLECT) system for personal reasons.
Zarbo was an officer at the police department since December 2017. His next court date is Feb. 7, 2023.
Jareliz Diaz is a digital content producer at FOX61 News. She can be reached at jdiaz@fox61.com
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