GoKawiilIs this public enemy #1?
James Giovansanti lives and works on Staten Island. Since 2022, traffic cameras have caught his pickup truck blasting through school zones or running red lights more than 547 times in that one borough. He received 187 camera-issued tickets in 2025 alone — an average of one every other day.
That record makes James Giovansanti the second-most-reckless driver in the city. Because he pilots a 4,800-pound RAM 1500 truck at more than 41 mph across the island, he poses a unique danger to himself and his neighbors. Ticket data show a pattern of dangerous driving in a wide arc from Pleasant Plains to Tompkinsville.
And here’s what makes him a true enemy of the public: James Giovansanti is an officer in the New York City Police Department — the agency supposedly in charge of keeping New Yorkers out of harm’s way.
NYPD officer James Giovansanti with his 120th Precinct colleagues in front of the Richmond Terrace station house. Photo: Gregory P. Mango
One policing expert said Giovansanti’s record indicates that he is “indifferent to public safety” — and even if he wasn’t driving every single time the truck was caught by a speed camera, he was clearly allowing someone else to drive his vehicle recklessly.
The expert, former cop turned criminal justice professor Michael Alcazar, said Giovansanti should face “serious discipline.” But that’s not happening — an NYPD spokesperson shrugged off the suggestion of punishment because Giovansanti’s tickets are “not related to his job or his duties in the department.”
Activists say that Giovansanti is a poster child for the urgency of passing the “Stop Super Speeders Act,” a pending bill in Albany that would force the worst repeat speeders to install a speed limiter in their vehicles. If such a law was already in place, Giovansanti’s truck would have been rendered unable to speed on Aug. 7, 2022, just months after he bought it.
“We’re horrified that one driver is putting Staten Island in danger,” said Rose Uscianowski, who organizes for safer streets on the island with Transportation Alternatives. “We’re counting on Albany to [pass] the bill and finally slow down super speeders. We can’t afford to wait.”
Reckless behavior
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