NYPD Cancels Community Meeting After Super-Speeder Cop Rattles Staten Island

It’s a waiting game.

For more than a month, spooked Staten Islanders have wanted to ask NYPD about local cop James Giovansanti, who collected hundreds of speeding tickets and menaced multiple New Yorkers with his pickup truck — but they’ll need to wait at least another month to get any answers after 120th Precinct officials abruptly canceled an upcoming community meeting.

The 120th Precinct’s monthly community council meeting was scheduled to take place on May 27 at a church in St. George. “It’s a great opportunity to get up to date information in and around your community,” the precinct wrote in a May 12 post on X, “and to voice any concerns you may have.”

But it was not to be. Nine days later, on May 21, the 120th quietly and unceremoniously canceled the meeting in another post on X. The NYPD did not reschedule the meeting, thereby forcing Staten Islanders to endure another month before they can ask about an officer who has repeatedly endangered them and their neighbors.

Asked for official comment, an NYPD spokesperson offered the following response: “The community council meeting conflicted with Idul-Adha Eid holiday.”

Hmm…

Idul-Adha Eid, or Eid Al-Adha, is a plausible reason for a conflict.

The Islamic calendar is lunar and hinges on the appearance of a crescent moon, whose visibility is affected by meteorological conditions. This means the general timing of holidays can be predicted in advance, but their exact timing cannot. In other words, the NYPD could not have known Idul-Adha Eid would fall on May 27 prior to May 17, when the most recent crescent moon appeared.

But wait: How did a religious holiday lead to the cancellation of a highly anticipated community event where local residents would have had the opportunity to confront NYPD personnel about a local cop with more than 500 speeding tickets? What did the holiday have to do with the meeting? Had this happened before?

Streetsblog identified at least two NYPD precincts — the 100th in the Rockaways, and the 63rd in southern Brooklyn — that had their own community meetings planned for the very same day, with no sign of cancellations. Why were those meetings carried out as planned, while the meeting at the 120th was cancelled?

The NYPD did not appreciate this line of inquiry. “This is getting to a weird place where you are questioning why the NYPD would acknowledge a Muslim holiday,” a department spokesperson wrote. The spokesperson went on:

In addition to the obvious reason of respect for the religion and the community, many of the officers will be doing patrol security at mosques and other sensitive sites in the precinct given the fact that there was an attack on a mosque just [last] week in San Diego where multiple people were murdered. We have said in multiple places, including at a press conference on Staten Island just this morning, that we were increasing patrols for that reason.

The spokesperson wasn’t done. “If you want to continue pursuing this,” they wrote, “we will happily give you a quote calling out your cultural insensitivity and continued questioning of why a precinct would deploy resources to protect the Muslim community on a day that could have a greater target because of the holiday.”

It isn’t unusual for precincts to call off community council meetings, but this particular cancellation stood out. Streetsblog called the precinct to confirm the meeting’s details on May 9. We heard from Staten Islanders who were eager to attend, too. The precinct’s commander, Inspector Eric Waldhelm, was almost certainly aware that New Yorkers wanted to discuss a subject that would embarrass him and his department.

“Canceling and not rescheduling sends the wrong message,” said former NYPD officer and John Jay professor Michael Alcazar. “Even if the precinct believes the Giovansanti issue is overblown, the community clearly wants an update. Transparency builds trust, and cancelling the meeting suddenly only fuels the perception that the NYPD is afraid to face the music.”

But the NYPD said it canceled its community meeting at a single precinct on Staten Island — and, apparently, nowhere else — in order to increase patrols outside mosques during a holiday.

So Staten Islanders with concerns about James Giovansanti and the 120th Precinct will need to wait until the next community meeting in late June. Unless the NYPD cancels that one, too.

The concern

Streetsblog revealed in April that Giovansanti, 33, had amassed 547 tickets for speeding and blowing red lights on his RAM 1500 since early 2022. Mayor Mamdani said his tickets were “unacceptable,” and an NYPD spokesperson said they were under internal review.

Since then, neither the mayor nor his police department have provided any updates on Giovansanti, who continues to work at the 120th Precinct, where he enjoys free parking provided by city taxpayers.

In the meantime, Staten Islanders have begged elected officials to intervene and shared harrowing accounts of their personal encounters with Giovansanti. Several island residents told Streetsblog that he and his truck nearly collided with them while they were walking or driving around the island. One said they twice witnessed Giovansanti speed through a red light at a blind intersection while driving in the wrong lane — an exceptionally dangerous act that shows an astonishing disregard for human life.

In the absence of any official response, some of the borough’s embattled residents had looked forward to the 120th Precinct’s community council meeting, a monthly gathering held by every city precinct, where locals can ask NYPD personnel about specific issues in their neighborhoods. It is the only setting in New York City where a New Yorker can directly question the police and receive an immediate answer.

Giovansanti “is an imminent threat to the community,” one Staten Islander told Streetsblog. “Shame on NYPD.” Another resident said: “Canceling May’s precinct community meeting is disrespectful, inexcusable and insulting. The 120th Precinct must be held to account.”