08/12/2026
NYSPIA President Kurt Labuda responded to a recent case in which a judge moved a carjacking case involving a 17-year-old against an off-duty NYSP Investigator to family court. The article ran in Lo Hud, but is behind the paywall. The full statement from NYSPIA is here:
The members of New York State Police Investigators Association (NYSPIA) are disappointed to learn about the judge's decision to transfer the case of a 17-year-old charged in a Yonkers carjacking from County Court to Family Court.
Carjacking with a knife is not a status offense or a minor lapse in judgment; it is a violent crime that puts drivers, passengers, and bystanders at serious risk. When a case this serious is diverted to a system that cannot impose criminal penalties, it sends the wrong message to victims, to law enforcement, and to the public we serve.
Public trust in our justice system depends on consistency of the severity of a crime and the seriousness of the response. When a case involving a stolen vehicle, a victim threatened at knifepoint, and real danger to the public ends up in a courtroom where the toughest outcome is a sealed juvenile record, we risk telling young people and the public that violent crime carries little real consequence.
NYSPIA fully supports rehabilitative approaches to juvenile offending in appropriate cases; however, as law enforcement, we frequently see that when an individual at this age commits a serious crime like this, it’s often not the first time they victimized someone or committed a serious offense. We maintain that violent crimes such as carjacking, particularly those involving weapons, threats, or physical harm, warrant the accountability structure of the criminal justice system.
We are not asking for vengeance; we are asking for a justice system that matches its response to the seriousness of the offense, so that both victims and the public can trust that violent crime will be treated as what it is.
A Yonkers teen accused of attempting to carjack an off-duty state trooper when he was 17 had his case moved from criminal court to family court.