{"id":560617,"date":"2026-04-27T06:27:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T06:27:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/560617\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T06:27:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T06:27:16","slug":"staten-islanders-save-us-from-super-speeder-cop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/560617\/","title":{"rendered":"Staten Islanders: Save Us From ‘Super Speeder Cop’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Residents of The Rock are fed up with public enemy #1<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\" The Streetsblog Photoshop Desk<\/a><\/p>\n

NYPD Officer James Giovansanti\u2019s pickup truck has been caught on camera 547 times in Staten Island since 2022 \u2014 including 187 camera-issued tickets<\/a> in 2025 alone \u2013 and Staten Islanders think he should \u201cswerve and protect\u201d no more.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s awful,\u2019 said Emmitt Mendoza as he waited for the bus near the ferry terminal at St. George.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like, as a public servant, you have to lead by example. Over 100 speeding tickets [last year] \u2026 I think that\u2019s really terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working out of the 120th Precinct station house on Richmond Terrace, Giovansanti \u2013 or someone else driving his 4,800-pound RAM 1500 truck \u2013 frequently runs red lights or through school zones. He\u2019s paid all of his $36,650.02 in tickets, records show.<\/p>\n

Camera-issued tickets don\u2019t count on a driver\u2019s record, and as long as the vehicle owner continues to pay the $50 fines, no public authority intervenes.<\/p>\n

A proposed bill<\/a> in the state legislature would allow the city to order repeat recidivist speeders to install a device in their cars to prevent speeding. It\u2019s similar to how those sentenced to driving while intoxicated must have an ignition interlock device<\/a> installed in their vehicle.<\/p>\n

If the so-called Stop Super Speeders Act<\/a> had been in effect, Giovansanti would have been notified of the requirement to install a speed limiter on Aug. 7, 2022, only a few months after he bought the truck. But since then, he\u2019s racked up hundreds of school zone speed camera tickets.<\/p>\n

The 180 camera-issued speeding tickets alone ranked Giovansanti as the second-worst driver in the entire city, according to Transportation Alternatives\u2019s analysis<\/a> of 2025 school-zone camera tickets and Streetsblog\u2019s reporting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many Staten Islanders said they supported the bill and wished it was already in place for reckless drivers like Giovansanti.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe should be not driving anymore,\u201d said Frank, a longtime Staten Islander, about Giovansanti. \u201cHe should be \u2026 a desk officer. Keep him away from patrol cars. Hopefully, he [won\u2019t] injure anybody. His license should be revoked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Streetsblog published its bombshell investigation into Giovansanti last week, no elected official on the Island has spoken publicly, but two of the borough\u2019s 14 elected officials<\/a> did respond to Streetsblog\u2019s requests for comment on Giovansanti\u2019s reckless speeding in their neighborhood.<\/p>\n

State Sen. Jessica Scarcella-Spanton (D-North Shore) put out a statement describing speeding and reckless driving \u201cserious public safety issues with often grave consequences.\u201d\u00a0She has signed onto the Stop Super Speeders bill.<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani also called Giovansanti\u2019s behavior \u201cunacceptable,\u201d but did not commit to disciplining New York\u2019s Finest worst speeder, who works for the taxpayers even as he endangers them daily. Mamdani said City Hall would \u201chave a conversation internally\u201d on what following through on that looks like \u2014 an equivocation that reset Streetsblog\u2019s Mamdani-O-Meter back to zero<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a police officer, Giovansanti is theoretically subject to NYPD discipline for dangerous conduct out of uniform. Former cop and policing expert Michael Alcazar told Streetsblog that Giovansanti should be subject to \u201cserious discipline,\u201d which is something to which the mayor could have committed without having a \u201cconversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think (the police) should be held to a higher standard,\u201d added Allen, a Staten Island resident.\u00a0\u201cI personally don\u2019t trust police. Society doesn\u2019t trust police with everything that has happened historically.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NYPD has still not commented on Giovansanti\u2019s record of serving but not protecting. Giovansanti did not return multiple requests for comment from Streetsblog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents of The Rock are fed up with public enemy #1. The Streetsblog Photoshop Desk NYPD Officer James…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5110],"tags":[5,122,3328,159,5190,5189,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-560617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-islanders","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-islanders","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-islanders","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkislanders","14":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116475255721142859","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}