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Unless the FAR changes recently, monitoring 121.5 is not required. If an aircraft has two Nav radios, you've got, say, your en route frequency in one, and either the next en route freq, or ATIS, or tower in the next one. The workload just gets too high to keep on radio on 121.5 all the time, and keep flipping the other one for your working frequencies.

121.5 is reserved for emergencies and ELT transmission, and chances are pretty low that the police would try to contact him on a freq that most pilots are not monitoring all the time. When flying cross-country over mountains or high plains, we often keep the other radio on 121.5 to listen for other pilots who may be in distress.

Flying in the NYC metro area is a real challenge, with lots of frequencies (see Criminal No. 18F's excellent post). This guy just screwed the pooch and blew it. I don't know how many hours he's flown recently, but Christmas vacation is prime opportunity for occasional pilots to take their families out for a jaunt.