" I love you, my brother, but I ain't going to Harlem"
South Asian Cabdriver won't let Danny Glover sit in the
front seat of his cab. South Asian Cab Drivers have a generic love for blacks and support black causes. But when it comes to service to blacks, it is strictly business and safety. " I love you, my brother, but I ain't going to Harlem"
"You may be a good man for all that I know. But man, do I really know? I would rather lose your fare and stay alive, man. I go to Harlem, but no return fare, man". ...JPR's analysis
After Complaints by Actor, Group Will Sue Taxi Panel
Related Article
No Fare: New York's Cabbies Show How Multi-Colored Racism Can
By THOMAS J. LUECK
EW YORK -- Three days after the actor Danny Glover protested that he had been passed by and treated rudely by New York City cabdrivers, state Sen. David Paterson and the Rev. Al Sharpton said Saturday that they were organizing a class-action lawsuit charging the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission with racial discrimination.
Separately, a group of minority officers in the New York City Police Department, 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, said Saturday that it had launched a campaign within the department to persuade officers on the street to devote more attention to the civil rights of those seeking taxis, and to issue summonses to taxi drivers who illegally pass by black and Hispanic customers.
At a rally in his Harlem headquarters, Sharpton said the episodes described earlier in the week by Glover reflected a form of bias that is common among taxi drivers.
Glover had staged a news conference, saying that he, his daughter and a friend of his daughter's had been ignored by several cabs, and that one driver who stopped had refused him access to the front seat of the taxi, even though Glover is more than 6 feet tall, has a bad hip and is entitled under taxi industry rules to stretch out in the front.
Although neither Sharpton nor Paterson said what penalties and policy changes they hoped to obtain by filing a lawsuit, they said they were preparing fliers to be circulated throughout the city, asking people who feel they have been discriminated against by taxi drivers to join as plaintiffs in the class-action court filing.
A spokesman for the Taxi and Limousine Commission, Allan Fromberg, declined to comment Saturday on either the threatened lawsuit or the campaign proposed by the minority police group.
But he defended the agency's efforts to root out racial discrimination by cabdrivers, which include fines and the use of undercover agents.
"We don't simply wait until people complain," he said. "We take pro-active steps."
Those attending the Harlem meeting, a mostly black group of a little more than 100 people, appeared to agree that bias among taxi drivers was widespread.
When asked by Sharpton how many in the group could recall cabbies refusing to be hailed, almost everyone in the room raised a hand.
One of them was Ramona Whaley, a board member of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, who said in an interview, "Of course I have been passed by."
Calling the threatened lawsuit against her own commission "a great thing," she said its current civil rights regulatory policy "glosses over" complaints of racial bias.
Paterson, a Harlem resident who is blind, and who has complained in the past about his difficulties in hailing cabs, said he had been "forced out" of cabs more than 100 times after he told the driver that his destination was Harlem.
Members of the minority police officers' group, who held a news conference Saturday in Lower Manhattan, said their proposal to increase police surveillance of taxi drivers falls within department guidelines, since any driver who refuses to be hailed because of a customer's race violates city and federal law, as well as regulations of the Taxi and Limousine Commission.
"We believe the Giuliani administration has been successful in stamping out squeegee men and other types of crime, but has ignored this problem," said Eric Adams, one of the police group's founders, referring to the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Adams said that officers on patrol would be encouraged to monitor cabdrivers' responses when they are hailed by minorities, and if the drivers fail to stop, issue summonses.
Fromberg said the Taxi and Limousine Commission would continue to employ "Operation Refusal," an undercover tactic in which agents, many of them black or Hispanic, are dispatched across the city to hail cabs and pose as customers.
When the cabbies fail to stop, or refuse to drive to the customer's desired destination, they are fined. In the case of repeat violators, their taxi licenses are revoked, Fromberg said.
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