Empathy may be poisonous.
Judges let 18-year-old subway hijacker Justine Randall-Pizarro go, not as soon as, not twice, however 5 instances this calendar 12 months in an obvious bid to point out mercy.
However all they’ve actually achieved is permit a clearly troubled teen to rack up a rap sheet of greater than a dozen arrests this 12 months, trigger havoc on the transit community, inconvenience commuters and harass already overworked MTA staff.
Randall-Pizarro was busted for commandeering a locked N practice at 4am in June, carrying a black hat and Crocs, then driving it one cease from the Broadway station in Astoria to thirty sixth Avenue.
“I went to Broadway, and behold – there was a lay-up practice there. Nonetheless on FaceTime with my homeboy, so I drove it whereas I used to be on FaceTime with him,” she instructed investigators. “And, I don’t know, we was simply playing around, turning up on FaceTime like whereas I used to be driving it.”
A teen wandering the streets at 4am and hijacking subway vehicles is begging for assist.
Clearly one thing could be very fallacious on a person degree. To not point out, she poses an enormous hazard to herself and others. That pleasure experience simply may have collided with one other practice. And this isn’t even her first go round. Why was she out and about?
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny instructed The Publish Randall-Pizarro, who’s transgender and listed on all paperwork as feminine, has been arrested twelve instances… simply in 2025. The Publish was capable of verify 17 complete arrests since September of 2024 when she turned 18.
“This individual is principally a transit recidivist who retains breaking into trains,” he mentioned. “When she breaks into them, she strikes them, she steals objects – practice keys, issues of that nature.”
All these arrests seem like in useless. Each time the police nab Randall-Pizarro, the justice system appears hellbent on letting her go together with a slap on the wrist.
On June 23, she entered a practice cabin and allegedly stole a feminine conductor’s bag. Prosecutors requested for $20,000 bail or a $60,000 bond, however a choose launched her on her personal recognizance.
On June 1, she supposedly took management of a special practice in Brooklyn. For that, a $25,000 bail or $50,000 bond was requested. But once more a choose set her unfastened on supervision.
On Could 26, she was accused of pepper spraying an MTA employee within the face on board an R practice. And but once more she was granted a supervised launch, despite a request for bail.
And, once more, in a Could 15 case that noticed her supposedly steal a backpack from a motorman’s cabin with keys and an MTA escape masks, a request for a mere $2,000 money or $4,000 bond was denied, and a supervised launch was as soon as once more granted as a substitute.
In yet one more April case involving a stolen backpack containing MTA keys and an MTA radio, a choose denied a request for supervised launch and as a substitute let her go on her personal recognizance.
Assistant District Legal professional Olivia Mittman has additionally mentioned in court docket they’ve video of Randal-Pizarro subway browsing on the highest of a practice.
How has she not been banned from the transit system?
What a waste of police time and sources. What an pointless ongoing menace to MTA staff (what ever occurred to the promise “assaulting MTA New York Metropolis Transit subway personnel is a felony punishable by as much as 7 years in jail” written on indicators throughout?) How a lot journey has she personally disrupted?
And what a disservice to Randall-Pizarro herself. An 18-year-old shouldn’t be enabled to provide such an intensive prison file in her first 12 months of maturity. There’s actually no justification for this suffocating leniency.
There needs to be penalties to your actions, and alternatives to study from them. Sadly, the one lesson realized right here is: do what you need, and even in case you get caught, and it gained’t meet up with you.
Particularly for the reason that pandemic, our tradition has adopted an all-out hostility in the direction of the justice system and penalties being doled out as they’re meant by legislation.
We’ve been instructed that crime is the product of social constructs and techniques of oppression, and that it’s merciful to defend its perpetrators from any penalties.
Nevertheless it’s plain to see this utopian world the place crimes are forgiven and the whole lot is ok and dandy is just a fantasy. Recidivism is actual, and penalties are what preserve a society from succumbing to lawlessness.
On August 5, Randall-Pizarro was arrested for skipping out on a court docket look and hauled earlier than court docket, the place all her instances at the moment are consolidated right into a cost of felony housebreaking and misdemeanor reckless endangerment. Her bail was set at $50,000 and she or he is being held within the girls’s jail at Rikers.
The court docket has additionally ordered a psychological well being analysis, after an earlier one expired.
Poisonous empathy has allowed Randall-Pizarro to proceed this self-destructive spiral. And it additionally put MTA staff and harmless vacationers at pointless danger, too. Hopefully lastly dealing with justice and getting assist would be the get up name she wants.
