Hey, Ace Taxi, one of your drivers was insisting (and the sadass driver called to police when they refused to prepay and get out of his cab so you know this incident is on record) that 2 African American men PREPAY for their cab ride at Journal Square tonight. Gee, why was that, 'riding while black' maybe? Do ALL your customers have to prepay? Because it seems to us if all your passengers aren't required to prepay for their rides you have a racist driver OR you help foster racist company policies...
So, Ace Taxi, which is it?
Time for Jersey City, After Dark
When I was in the biz (6 years) certain specific destination areas were always asked for deposits. It didn't matter what the fare looked like, but that we had had problems with runouts/robberies in those areas. If that looked like it might be reflecting negatively on any racial groups that were dominant in those areas was that the communities fault or ours? We also asked for deposits on most out of town orders unless it was a really common run like airport service.
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember you suggesting that pizza places stop delivering to a certain apt. complexes in Ypsi until the community did something about it's problem. It seems possible that there might be a correlation.
Now, I have no idea about the reputation of Journal Square or really any thing about your new area, but I am suggesting that there is a faint possibility that this might not have been racially motivated but of some reasonable business practice. Deposits are just not uncommon in the taxi business.
However I do know that there are zillions of racists out there and it could be all that you imply as well.
Cheers
Stell
Stell, we've had some awful issues like this around Journal Square which I wrote about a couple weeks ago. There have been over 400 citations issued for bad drivers in and around Journal Square since last October. Rip-off type business practices mostly.
ReplyDeletehttp://jerseycitydesk.blogspot.com/2009/01/louie-depalma-is-alive-and-well-and.html
I did some checking and as near as I can see, demanding a deposit is not allowed. I DO remember my commentary on the pizza deliveries and I DO stand by that. I'm glad you mentioned this is not uncommon. I did not know that but I did a half hours worth of research on New Jersey and Jersey City taxi laws and expectations and can find nothing allowing a deposit for going to any part of the city. It was my opinion, and yeah, we all know about opinions, this guy was giving them a difficult time because they were black. In fact when the driver called police, to tell them he had guys in his cab who wouldn't get out, the gentlemen in the back kept trying to be heard over the driver "Tell them why, tell them WHY you're trying to kick us out".
I'll try to do some more follow up on this and I sure didn't know that this was a somewhat common practice for cabbies and cab companies.
Will advise and I thank you for some professional context!