09/02/2026
Dear Sane America,
Yesterday in Times Square, Pamela Cisneros, 49, of Queens, treated Seventh Avenue like an all-you-can-stab buffet. She looked like an over-stuffed burrito waddling around, pulled two kitchen knives out of a Target bag, and in about twenty seconds stabbed a 68-year-old man and then Erin Piacenti, 32. Erin died. The man lived. Cisneros then waddled toward police with both knives still in her hands, ignored every order to drop them, announced she’d rather kill the officers, shrugged off the tasers, and kept coming.
So they shot her.
And now, this is the part that apparently requires a think-piece... we never have to worry about her stabbing anyone else. Ever. See how easy that is? One afternoon of random murder in the middle of the most filmed intersection on the planet, a four-minute conversation that went nowhere, and then the problem is permanently solved. No ankle monitor. No “she’s struggling with her mental health” press conference six months later after the next victim.
Just done.
Now imagine, just imagine... if we treated the rest of them the same way. Imagine we actually locked these people up when they stab strangers, or swing knives at cops, or keep proving they cannot be left around other human beings. Imagine we didn’t release them because the jail is “overcrowded” or because a judge thought a stern talking-to plus a bus token would do the trick. Imagine that when someone is in the middle of killing people in public and refuses to stop, we sometimes just kill them instead of hoping the taser works this time.
The results would be almost comically simple.
Fewer people would get stabbed in Times Square. Fewer families would be identifying bodies at Bellevue. Tourists could walk past the ball-drop building without wondering whether the next person with a shopping bag is about to start a collection. Repeat offenders would spend their time in cells instead of back on the street collecting new victims.
And the ones who keep coming at police with weapons after they’ve already drawn blood would, occasionally, not get a second chance. It would be boring, really. No more “unprovoked double stabbing” headlines every other month. No more body-cam footage of officers begging someone to drop the knife while civilians scatter. Just a lot of dangerous people sitting in prison, and a much smaller number of them no longer breathing because they chose to keep attacking after they were told to stop.
Apparently that’s the controversial part.
Not the part where a woman is dead on the sidewalk because someone decided other people’s lives were optional. The controversial part is the idea that we might actually remove the people who keep doing it.
Cisneros doesn’t get to stab anyone else.
That’s the whole point. It wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t a failure of social services in that moment. It was a woman who looked like an over-stuffed burrito waddling around Times Square with two knives after she’d already killed someone. They stopped her the only way left. See how easy that is when you stop pretending the alternative is compassion?
Credit: Glenn Reib
