Some of NYC’s Worst Super Speeders Are City Marshals (You Know, The Guys With Badges)

They get justice for private citizens — yet they endanger them at the same time.

City marshals — private citizens appointed by the mayor to secure civil court judgments on behalf of victorious plaintiffs — are among the city’s worst super-speeders, with just 30 of them racking up 647 speed-camera infractions and 102 red-light tickets, virtually all since 2020, city records show.

Streetsblog obtained a list of 30 city marshals who have been issued parking placards and found that all but one had racked up camera-issued tickets for reckless driving. And 12 of these civil enforcement officers — or 40 percent — have gotten at least 10 school-zone speeding tickets since 2020.

Two of these officers have gotten over 120 camera-issued school-zone speeding tickets:

• One marshal, who drives a vehicle with the license plate LEG6496, has received 125 camera-issued speeding tickets and 13 red light tickets since 2023. This marshal’s driving is only getting worse — between July 2025 and June 2026, they received 68 speed-camera and 10 red-light tickets.
• Another marshal, whose license plate is W857KP, has received 132 speeding tickets and 13 red lights tickets in a saga of unmitigated dangerous driving going back to 2014. That reckless driving remains a problem: Since January 2025, this driver has gotten 19 camera-issued tickets for speeding or running red lights.

Both drivers racked up enough tickets in different 12-month periods to be declared a “super speeder” under New York State law. Such drivers will soon be required to install speed-limiting devices inside their cars to prevent recklessness.

City pols were appalled to hear that marshals who are appointed by the mayor to enforce civil judgments won by private citizens in court are themselves law-breakers.

“No one is above the law,” said Council Member Kayla Santosuosso (D-Bay Ridge). “The most reckless drivers must be reined in, no matter who they work for or what they do.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Investigation, which oversees the marshals, admitted that it hasn’t tracked the officers’ driving patterns, but after told of Streetsblog’s findings, a spokesperson for the agency said it would now be “following up on these allegations.”

“DOI will be issuing a memo to all city marshals reminding them of their obligation to obey traffic laws,” Diane Struzzi, the department’s director of communications, told Streetsblog. “They are required to obey the law in both personal and official capacities.

“Any marshal found to display a pattern of reckless or dangerous driving could be subject to disciplinary action,” Struzzi added.

Who are these people?

City marshals occupy an often-overlooked niche in New York City’s sprawling law enforcement world: Marshals can seize assets on behalf of private citizens who won judgments in civil court. In exchange, the marshals can collect a bounty of up to 5 percent.

These officers are given city-issued placards, and they are granted broad powers to tow vehicles with more than $350 in unpaid fines, though it is unclear how often marshals actually do this work.

Given their role in the city’s law-enforcement ecosystem, it was especially hard for street safety advocates to accept that private individuals with quasi-police powers were abusing that power so flagrantly.

“City marshals can’t keep New Yorkers safe if they’re speeding recklessly around the five boroughs,” said Ben Furnas, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives. “We can’t accept repeat speeding in New York City.”

Soon, we won’t have to: Under the Stop Super-Speeders law passed by state lawmakers last year and making its way through the City Council, drivers with at least 16 camera-issued school-zone speeding tickets in a 12-month period will be forced to install a speed-limiting device in all their vehicles.

Had the law been in place already, at least three of the 30 placarded marshals in Streetsblog’s data cache would have been forced to install a speed-limiter — and two marshals cleared the super-speeder threshold in at least three different 12-month periods. The worst marshal, according to this data, has actually qualified as a super-speeder in four separate calendar years.

At that egregious rate of ticketing, this driver is over 50 times more likely to be involved in a fatal or serious crash than an average driver, according to a 2024 study by DOT. This reckless driver’s speeding history puts them among the 400 worst drivers across the approximately two million drivers of personal cars in New York City — and yet the city still vests them with the power to enforce judgments and tow other cars.

It’s an eerie reminder that people in official positions — i.e. New York City employees who should know better — are occasionally caught by the press for flagrant violations of the public trust. Earlier this year, Streetsblog identified a Staten Island cop with 547 speed-camera tickets. He received 187 camera-issued tickets in 2025 alone — an average of one every other day. The only discipline he has received from the NYPD is that he no longer drives a squad car on duty.

The latest records obtained by Streetsblog do not include the name of any specific marshal, rendering it even more difficult to pressure the political system for change.