When Criminal Irresponsibility And Official Disinterest Collide On A Busy Brooklyn Street

Last Shabbat, I walked home from synagogue without incident, as I have done thousands of times over the years. Yet, 24 hours later, I learned of a family in Brooklyn whose walk home from Shabbat morning services was tragically different. A devastating car crash claimed the lives of a young mother and two of her three children, leaving several others injured.

Sadly, automobile accidents on Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn are common. Yet even in a city that has seen too many auto related mishaps, especially since the end of the pandemic, this accident stood out. What made this accident especially shocking was that the driver of the vehicle that caused the accident should never have been behind the wheel in the first place. Multiple news sources reported that the driver had 93 moving violations and other tickets in the past 18 months including 20 speed camera tickets and 5 red light tickets, as well as over $10,000 in unpaid fines.  Her license had also been suspended.

We have heard of these situations in the past where people have racked up multiple tickets and fines. And given the many crimes and challenges that law enforcement in New York City must address on a daily basis, we can understand that speeding tickets and parking tickets don't merit the attention that more high-profile crimes receive. We understand, until the criminal irresponsibility of a driver combined with the disinterest of the authorities contribute to the death of a mother and two of her children and severe injuries to others, who were guilty of nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How much indifference and contempt for rules, laws, and authority must the average New Yorker demonstrate before they are punished for their crimes?

In the aftermath of this tragedy, a group of legislators and concerned citizens held a demonstration calling for the cars of those who have so many moving violations to be outfitted with a special device that limits the speed of the car. Imagine that. Instead of punishing the criminal, impounding her car, seizing her assets, penalizing her for making society less safe, elected officials felt like they were actually addressing the problem by making the case for adding technology -- to the car registered to a criminal whose license was suspended, meaning that she had no legal right to operate a motor vehicle -- to prevent the car from going too fast. While well-intentioned, this solution seems misguided. Does it make sense to you? 

We hear stories every day in the news about egregious violations of law, common sense, and simple human decency. So what was it about this story that caused it to stay in the forefront of my mind all week long? Maybe it was the extensive media coverage. Maybe it was the fact that it was a family walking home from synagogue on Shabbat.  Or maybe all the above combined with an aspect of the Passover narrative that is particularly important for us to consider at this time of the year.

Passover is known as Z'man Cheruteu, The Time of Our Freedom. Many of our Passover observances stress the importance of the gift of freedom. We are commanded to consider what freedom must have meant to those who had been slaves. That feeling, that awareness, that profound gratitude, as well as the responsibility that comes with it is at the heart of the Passover narrative. That’s the experience that we are trying to recreate in our Seders. Mediating on the meaning of freedom not only shapes the holiday, but in a very real sense, our entire Jewish identity.

But freedom, as the Torah and our Rabbis understood it, was not the freedom to run wild in the desert. It was the mandate to live with the awareness that freedom must always be accompanied by responsibility and obligations, helping us to live in service of God and our fellow human beings, lest our freedom degenerate into selfishness and greed that ultimately debases ourselves and lacks regard for the dignity and humanity of others.    

Sadly there was a terrible example of freedom devoid of responsibility last Shabbat and it cost the lives of a mother and children.  That’s what happens in a free society when criminal irresponsibility and official disinterest collide on a busy Brooklyn street.