{"id":256880,"date":"2026-06-05T21:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/256880\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T21:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T21:39:14","slug":"council-members-demand-investigation-after-brooklyn-courtroom-birth-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/256880\/","title":{"rendered":"Council Members demand investigation after Brooklyn courtroom birth"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than two dozen City Council members are calling for an investigation of the circumstances that resulted in a 33-year-old woman giving birth in a Brooklyn courtroom last month.<\/p>\n

After being arrested for low-level drug and trespassing charges, Samantha Randazzo \u2014 who was nine months pregnant \u2014 went into labor<\/a> while awaiting her arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court on May 15.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Randazzo was reportedly handcuffed at the time, though court officers said she was un-cuffed once she was in active labor, and delivered her baby un-assisted in full view of the courtroom.<\/p>\n

In a June 4 letter<\/a> to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch, the city\u2019s five district attorneys and several administrative judges, the 29 Council Members expressed their \u201coutrage\u201d over the incident.<\/p>\n

\"legalLegal advocates rallied over the incident last month. File photo by Gabriele Holtermann<\/p>\n

\u201cThis horrific and degrading incident is the result of a series of systemic failures that reinforced conditions which put the people of New York needlessly in harm\u2019s way,\u201d the letter reads. \u201cWe\u2019re calling for an internal investigation into the circumstances that kept a 9-month pregnant mother in police custody for over 30 hours for an offense in which police and the district attorney have discretion to issue an appearance ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n

Legal advocates have condemned the incident as part of a systemic failure in the city\u2019s court system. Since March 2025, three people held in custody at Brooklyn Central Booking have died, two in<\/a> the facility<\/a> and one<\/a> at the hospital after suffering a medical emergency.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two of those people died in April 2026, just weeks before Randazzo gave birth in the courtroom.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

The letter calls for additional reforms for law enforcement and courts, urging the city to stop a surge in \u201cquality of life policing\u201d and arrests and detainments for low-level offenses, allow the Civilian Complaint Review Board to investigate in-custody deaths, and put independent emergency medical services in courthouses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It also calls on district attorneys to decline to prosecute low-level violations or desk tickets and automatically clear bench tickets and summons adjudications for low-level quality-of-life offenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"councilThe letter was signed by 29 members, including Brooklyn representative Alexa Avil\u00e9s (left) and Queens rep Tiffany Caban. Photo courtesy of William Alatriste\/NYC Council Media Unit<\/p>\n

Eleven members of the Brooklyn delegation signed off on the letter, including Council Member Sandy Nurse, co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, and council members Lincoln Restler, Jennifer Guti\u00e9rrez, Alexa Avil\u00e9s, Kayla Santosuosso, Crystal Hudson, Rita Joseph and Chi Oss\u00e9.\u00a0<\/p>\n

City Hall did not immediately return request for comment.\n<\/p>\n

In a statement, the Legal Aid Society praised the letter, and urged more action.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened to Samantha Randazzo was not an isolated failure. It comes amid a growing crisis in which New Yorkers have died in New York Police Department custody while awaiting arraignment, exposing the dangers of a system that continues to rely on unnecessary custodial arrests and detention for low-level offenses,\u201d Legal Aid said.<\/p>\n

The org urged the city to adopt a ten-point reform plan<\/a> drafted by public defense organizations including the Bronx Defenders, Legal Aid and the Bronx Defenders. The plan includes inspections of NYPD central booking, mandatory investigations of \u201cfatal deficiencies in NYPD policies, practices and procedures,\u201d and amendments to the NYPD disciplinary matrix. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than two dozen City Council members are calling for an investigation of the circumstances that resulted in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1412,42140,98,100,99,100092,100093,52811,419,18148,32710,5302,3782,25981,9,24,370,63,103,646,7153,65290,91862,38008,82],"class_list":["post-256880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-accountability","tag-birth","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-brooklyn-central-booking","tag-brooklyn-courtroom","tag-courthouse","tag-courts","tag-district-attorney","tag-jennifer-gutierrez","tag-jessica-tisch","tag-legal-aid-society","tag-letter","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newsletter","tag-nyc","tag-nypd","tag-police-and-fire","tag-rally","tag-reform","tag-samantha-randazzo","tag-sandy-nurse","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}