NYPD Won’t Let Super-Speeder Cop Drive Squad Cars As Internal Affairs Launches Probe Following Streetsblog Report
The NYPD has barred a repeatedly reckless officer from getting behind the wheel of police vehicles — and has launched an internal affairs investigation — after Streetsblog revealed the Staten Island cop’s astonishing record of deadly driving.
Inspector Eric Waldhelm of the 120th Precinct, where Officer James Giovansanti is stationed, disclosed the previously unknown punishment and internal affairs inquiry at a precinct community meeting on Wednesday night — the first such public gathering since Streetsblog reported in April that traffic cameras caught Giovansanti’s 4,800-pound RAM 1500 pickup truck breaking the speed limit, or blowing through red lights, on 547 occasions since 2022.
“He’s been grounded,” Waldhelm said after we asked about Giovansanti’s status in the department and his rank as the second-most-dangerous driver in the five boroughs. Being “grounded” means Giovansanti cannot pilot an NYPD squad car by himself.
Waldhelm clarified that the punishment is a downstream consequence of the internal affairs inquiry.
“Giovansanti is currently under investigation by the internal affairs bureau,” he said. “We took action to prohibit him from driving a department vehicle until the conclusion of that investigation.”
Waldhelm’s comments are the first since Streetsblog’s story stunned the city and divided its law enforcement community. Several New Yorkers described their own terrifying encounters with the cop. Within weeks, state legislators passed a bill that will require Giovansanti and other super-speeders to install speed limiters in their vehicles.
The investigation deepens
Waldhelm’s comments indicate the NYPD’s attitude toward Giovansanti’s behavior has evolved since Streetsblog’s original story in April. The department initially downplayed his speeding tickets as unrelated to his job. A week after the story’s publication, an NYPD spokesperson told the New York Times that his tickets were “under review” — a vague statement that signaled a perfunctory, small-time investigation that would go nowhere.
But the involvement of the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau is no small thing. The division is tasked with “detecting, investigating, and bringing to justice the small number of New York City police officers and civilians who engage in misconduct and corruption.” The IAB’s participation means the department’s main inquiry into Giovansanti’s behavior has migrated from a little-known precinct on Staten Island to the department’s powerful bureaucracy in Manhattan.
His speeding tickets are now the direct concern of Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Mamdani. That could set up a fight between the two, or between them and Giovansanti’s union, the Police Benevolent Association.
The revelation of the IAB inquiry comes after the NYPD and Mamdani’s City Hall repeatedly refused to answer even basic questions about Giovansanti’s speeding record and his status in the department.
The NYPD, in particular, took unusual steps to frustrate Streetsblog’s reporting. Citing a Muslim holiday that fell on May 27, the department cancelled the 120th Precinct’s community precinct meeting that was scheduled for the same day. A department spokesperson subsequently threatened to publicly accuse Streetsblog of Islamophobia after we asked why other precincts were able to hold their own community meetings on May 27, while the Staten Island precinct scrubbed its meeting.
The precinct meeting
Approximately 15 residents and a handful of representatives of local politicians attended the community precinct meeting on Wednesday evening, in a first-floor meeting room in the 120th Precinct’s station house in St. George. Around two dozen officers lined the room’s perimeter.
After a half-hour ceremony where precinct leaders handed out six “Cop of the Month” awards, the leaders opened up the room to questions. The first question, from a local resident, was about digital security. The second question, from another local resident, was about Giovansanti. The room’s mood immediately shifted as the assembled cops grimaced and looked away.
“Officer Giovansanti almost ran over someone, and we don’t know how his crimes are being addressed,” the second resident said. “We’d like to know.”
Waldhelm answered that he could not comment about the internal affairs investigation because it is “way above me.”
A third resident asked about how supervisors detect the behavior of officers like Giovansanti. “Police officers are not being held accountable for their vehicles outside the 9- to-5,” said Nicole Meyers, who serves as the president of the NAACP’s Staten Island chapter. “What are you doing to address that?”
In response, Waldhelm claimed that he is “not privy to their personal driving records until it rises to the level of a crime.”
This is false. Waldhelm has access to his officers’ personal driving records because in New York State they are public. All Waldhelm had to do — but did not — was collect the license plates of his subordinates and look them up in city records.
Furthermore, the NYPD’s patrol guide forbids officers from receiving an official NYPD parking placard for their personal vehicles if they incur “five or more red light camera violations or 15 or more school speed camera violations” in a 12-month period. This policy obviously requires NYPD personnel to look up those violations on an ongoing basis.
In other words, Waldhelm appears to be actively disobeying official NYPD policy, and will continue to do so, in order to protect cops that endanger New Yorkers with their cars. It’s unclear, however, whether Giovansanti has ever received a parking placard.
The NYPD, the IAB, City Hall, the officers’ union, and Giovansanti himself did not respond to requests for comment.
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