Empathy might 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 performed 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 prepare 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 prepare there. Nonetheless on FaceTime with my homeboy, so I drove it whereas I used to be on FaceTime with him,” she advised 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 automobiles is begging for assist.
Clearly one thing could be very incorrect on a person degree. To not point out, she poses a large hazard to herself and others. That pleasure experience simply might have collided with one other prepare. And this isn’t even her first go round. Why was she out and about?
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny advised The Put up Randall-Pizarro, who’s transgender and listed on all paperwork as feminine, has been arrested twelve instances… simply in 2025. The Put up was in a position to affirm 17 whole arrests since September of 2024 when she turned 18.
“This particular person is mainly a transit recidivist who retains breaking into trains,” he mentioned. “When she breaks into them, she strikes them, she steals objects – prepare keys, issues of that nature.”
All these arrests look 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 prepare 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 unique prepare in Brooklyn. For that, a $25,000 bail or $50,000 bond was requested. But once more a choose set her free on supervision.
On Could 26, she was accused of pepper spraying an MTA employee within the face on board an R prepare. And but once more she was granted a supervised launch, regardless of 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 an alternative.
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 an alternative let her go on her personal recognizance.
Assistant District Legal professional Olivia Mittman has additionally mentioned in courtroom they’ve video of Randal-Pizarro subway browsing on the highest of a prepare.
How has she not been banned from the transit system?
What a waste of police time and assets. 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 in depth prison file in her first 12 months of maturity. There’s actually no justification for this suffocating leniency.
There ought to be penalties on your actions, and alternatives to be taught from them. Sadly, the one lesson discovered right here is: do what you need, and even if you happen to get caught, and it received’t meet up with you.
Particularly because the pandemic, our tradition has adopted an all-out hostility in direction of the justice system and penalties being doled out as they’re meant by regulation.
We’ve been advised that crime is the product of social constructs and programs 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 every little thing is ok and dandy is solely a fantasy. Recidivism is actual, and penalties are what maintain a society from succumbing to lawlessness.
On August 5, Randall-Pizarro was arrested for skipping out on a courtroom look and hauled earlier than courtroom, 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 he or she is being held within the girls’s jail at Rikers.
The courtroom 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 threat, too. Hopefully lastly dealing with justice and getting assist would be the get up name she wants.
