NYC Cabbies: ‘We will profile’

If you’re planning a trip to the big apple this Christmas be prepared to walk because NYC taxis are going to be much like being Latino in Arizona.

“The head of a city taxi-drivers union is urging hacks to use “racial profiling” when deciding whether to pick up passengers, after a Queens livery driver was shot by an apparently Hispanic gunman over the weekend.”

That is the lead paragraph in a front page story of the New York Post. The suspect in the shooting was not identified in the published report but police say that he is a 22 year old Latino with a sealed criminal record. The attack, according to reports, was recoded by an in-cab video camera; so the  union has circled it’s cabs and may be weary of Latino and black fares.

Again the Post:

“I don’t care about racial profiling. You know, sometimes it is good we are racially profiled, because the God’s honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics,” said (president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, Frank) Mateo, who is Hispanic and has a black father.”

It turns out that, in New York City at least, a hack union card runs thicker than culture or race.

NYC Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky called racial profiling “illegal, wring and unacceptable.” But Mateo is adamant. He’s has called on the members of his union to pass up a fare is the feel the person is suspicious. He gave no definition of what he meant by that.

There was no information on the condition of the shooting victim, 53 year old Trevor Bell.