LOCKPORT — Two police officers drove to Indiana last week and returned with a criminal suspect who says he plans to marry a city police captain’s niece.

When the suspect got back to Western New York, a judge ordered him jailed after setting bail at $1 million.

Isn’t all of this overkill for a few misdemeanor charges?

That’s what Christopher K. Crego’s defense lawyer asked last week after watching his client led off to jail in handcuffs.

“I’ve never seen anyone extradited for misdemeanors,” said the lawyer, Timothy D. Haseley. “He shouldn’t have done what he did, but he was never planning on coming back here.”

Haseley has represented for the last 20 years.

“He’s a likable guy,” Haseley said, “but he’s gruff, and he’s crude, and he doesn’t know when to quit. And he doesn’t make the best decisions.”

Police arrested Crego, 39, after he practically drew a road map on the social networking sites Facebook and MySpace to the tattoo parlor job he took in Terre Haute, Ind. He left Western New York with a pending sentencing in an assault case and with animal-cruelty charges filed against him, and before serving his sentence on a conviction for driving while impaired.

After U. S. marshals arrested him Feb. 3 in Indiana, he intended to fight extradition and presented a letter from his attorney to a judge there saying it was doubtful that New York would seek a governor’s warrant to have him extradited on misdemeanor charges.

The judge told him that New York officials were serious about extradition, and Crego agreed to be brought back to Lockport last Monday.

Crego said outside of court last week that he thought he had little to worry about because he was facing only misdemeanor charges, and he left Lockport because he just wanted to “live my life” and “get . . . out of New York.”

He also told reporters that he planned to get out of jail — he predicted in five months — and leave New York again, to marry the niece of Lockport police Capt. Richard L. Podgers, chief of detectives, who helped with the investigation.

Haseley said that he “didn’t want to point fingers at Podgers” but suggested that a posting on Crego’s Facebook page saying Podgers’ niece and Crego were engaged might have had something to do with the extradition.

Podgers called that ridiculous. He said that he provided Crego’s location and his police files to the Niagara County district attorney’s office and that prosecutors handled the matter from there.

“The district attorney himself decided to bring him back, not me,” Podgers said. “I don’t demand it; the DA authorized it. There’s no way a policeman can make that decision.”

Podgers also said that the niece, Cassandra Podgers, moved out of the area 20 years ago and that they have not talked in several years.

The police captain and others pointed out that states normally don’t extradite in misdemeanor cases but that Crego initially faced a felony case. They also said that his social networking sites made it easy for police to find him and that it was cheap to bring him back.

Crego initially was charged with felony second-degree assault and a weapons count related to a November 2008 bar fight in which Fratelli’s pizzeria owner Patrick Petrie Jr. tried to intervene as Crego argued with a woman. Petrie was hit in the face with a beer bottle, which required eye surgery. Crego pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of third-degree misdemeanor assault. A warrant was issued when he did not appear for sentencing last October.

“We have had occasion to extradite on misdemeanors in the past,” Assistant District Attorney Timothy R. Lundquist said. “The injuries [in the Crego case] were pretty significant. We look at the nature of the case, the circumstances of the case and the evidence in the case, and make the call.

“The other issue that comes up occasionally is whether we have the resources to extradite.”

The 2010 county budget gives the district attorney’s office $13,000 for extradition expenses. Podgers said that it cost $300 to send Lt. Detective John

P. Yotter and Officer Michael R. Wasik to Indiana with a “few tankfuls of gas” and overnight stay.

Before he fled the state, Crego also accepted a reduced plea of driving while impaired on charges of driving while intoxicated and marijuana possession from August 2009. He was supposed to serve 75 hours of community service and go to drug and alcohol counseling but did not, City Court officials said.

He also faces a new charge of bail jumping, as well as the animal-cruelty charges. He is accused of shooting birds with a BB gun in Buffalo.

Haseley said that by “his calculations,” Crego likely will be sentenced to about seven months in jail.

Cassandra Podgers’ name never came up in the investigation until after the case was in the district attorney’s hands, Capt. Podgers said.

“I have no idea how a person in Michigan would know a person in Indiana,” he said. “I have no idea how they know each other.”

It was through Facebook.

In an e-mail to The Buffalo News, Cassandra Podgers wrote that she and Crego have only known each other a few months and have never met in person. They have carried out a long-distance relationship and are not officially engaged, she said, but she hopes that after he serves his time, they can talk about a wedding.

She said that she understands that her uncle was just doing his job but that the cases against Crego have been blown out of proportion.

“Everyone has rough edges,” she wrote, “maybe he has more than one, but he is not one thing—and that is a dangerous criminal. . . .

“Although he tends to shoot his mouth off at very inappropriate times, he is still a human being.”