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Of Kangaroos and
By DAN ACKMAN A few months ago, while reporting on a story about
taxi drivers, I heard time and again that the Taxi and Limousine
Commission courts were unfair, arbitrary, even corrupt. "Kangaroo courts," the drivers
said. When I tried to find
out for myself whether this was true, I was told that the TLC courts were
closed to the public, and I was forced to sue the TLC to gain access. Armed with a court order I was
finally able to observe the tribunal. Sure enough, the kangaroos were
hopping. The TLC holds more than 80,000 hearings per year,
the vast majority of which are initiated by TLC inspectors or the NYPD
taxi squad. A fraction,
roughly 3 percent, are initiated by passengers. The TLC has said that its
conviction rate is 75 percent.
But this figure actually understates the agency's "success" since
often cops or inspectors issue multiple summonses for essentially the same
offense. Of the few cases
that go to appeal, the TLC wins 94 percent. I visited the court with Jonathan Brunert, a legal
affairs reporter for the BBC in London. In the very first case we happened
in on, a driver named Emmanuel Emelia was accused of failing to signal a
right turn on 8th Avenue and 41st street. Emelia had been a health care
administration student at NYU, driving a cab nights and weekends. He drives less now that he has
graduated, but he decided to fight the ticket on principle and because his
insurance rates could be affected.
Emelia testified that the police officer
approached him after he came to a full stop at a cab stand near the Port
Authority and asked for his license and rate card. When Emelia asked why, the officer
said he failed to signal his turn.
Emelia protested that he had signaled-- in fact his turn
light was still on. The
officer, Emelia said, told him to tell it to the
judge. The problem, say drivers and lawyers who represent
them (Emelia represented himself, as it seems most do) is the judges don't
listen. This case was essentially a swearing
contest. It is the kind of
case, drivers say, that they, mostly immigrants who struggle with the
language, almost never win. And why should they? Why shouldn't the judges, who work
for the TLC on a per diem basis, believe the inspectors, who also work for
the TLC? One reason, lawyers
say, is that inspectors and the cops are under pressure, if not from
quotas then from their bosses or simply from peer pressure, to write
tickets. If those tickets are
dismissed the inspectors look bad.
In fact, there was evidence of this phenomenon
right outside the hearing room.
There we met another driver, Jin Choi, who showed me his summons.
It was issued by the same cop, on the same day, at almost the same time,
for the same offense-- failure to signal a right turn. In both cases, the
summonses, including the name of the police officer, were completely
illegible. (In any other
court, the illegibility alone would cause the tickets to be dismissed.)
Choi, like Emelia, insisted he had signaled. The cop told him the same
thing: Tell the judge. On this day, with reporters watching, the judge,
who refused to give his name-- is there another court in America where the
judge's names are state secrets?-- did listen, quite attentively, it
seemed, and he later dismissed the case against Emelia. But meanwhile, Emelia had to spend
a whole afternoon waiting for his case to be heard. In this he was lucky: many drivers
are made to wait all day for hearings noticed at 9:30 a.m.
Just after leaving Emelia, we met Tom Travers, a
65-year-old man who owns his own cab and who has been a cabbie since
1968. From Travers, we got a
whiff of Kafka.
Last December, Travers dropped off a passenger on
Madison Avenue and 34th Street at 4 in the afternoon and went off
duty. A man got in the cab
anyway and asked for a ride to the Upper West Side. Travers told the man that he was
off duty and showed him a notation on his trip sheet to prove it. But man refused to get out of the
cab and used his cell phone to call a TLC inspector. Before the inspector arrived, Travers called a cop over. At that point the would-be
passenger walked away, Travers said. When Travers brought his car in for one of its
three yearly inspections, the TLC told him his license had been suspended
because he had missed a court date.
As it turned out, the TLC had registered a complaint and set a
court date. Travers knew nothing about the complaint or the court date
since the TLC mailed his notice to a P.O. Box Travers had stopped using
years before. As it happened, the passenger had not shown up for
the hearing either. Thus, the
complaint was dismissed. But
that the passenger failed to attend the hearing was deemed no excuse for
Travers' absence since the TLC blamed him for failing to register his new
address. He was fined
and suspended even though he had proof that the TLC had been sending
correspondence to his new address since 1997. Apparently, the TLC office in Long
Island City knew his new address, but had not informed the headquarters
downtown on Rector Street.
Travers managed to get the fine thrown out, but
not before he was out of work for three weeks. Even after winning his appeal,
Travers was not done. It
seems he had received two summonses, one to the driver, one to the
owner. Although in this case,
the owner and the driver were the same person, the judge in Long Island
City could do nothing about the summons against the owner, which was
scheduled to be heard on Rector Street. So while Tom Travers, driver, was
off the hook, Tom Travers, owner, faces another day in
court. These are just a few cases, but they are hardly
isolated incidents.
Notices being sent to the wrong address, drivers being made to wait
until 4 p.m. for a 9:30 hearing, only to have it adjourned for another
day, dubious summonses backed by TLC inspector testimony that is accepted
as if the word of God: These are everyday events in Long Island City. For years the TLC barred the public from its
tribunals, offering reasons that are transparently bogus. The hearing rooms are too small,
they said. In fact there is
plenty of room. The public
might be afraid to come forward if the press was watching, they said. In fact, TLC inspectors or the
police bring 95 percent of the cases so "the public" plays no part. Visitors might disrupt the
proceedings, they claimed.
The hearings we saw managed to proceed apace. TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg told the BBC's Brunert that all he wants is for the agency to be able to conduct its business "unencumbered." This is no doubt truer than Mr. Fromberg would like to admit. But if yesterday was any test, encumbrance from a curious press is exactly what the TLC needs. |