jamesinclair
Banned
Kareeal Akins still gets chills thinking about the long, frigid walk home that he and his then-pregnant wife were forced to make this past winter after the city seized his car.
At about 9 p.m. on Jan. 24, he drove his white 2002 Honda Accord from his Sheepshead Bay apartment to the corner of Church Avenue and Ocean Parkway in Kensington to pick up his wife, Natalie, from her friends home.
He remembers pulling up to the intersection, his wife getting into his car and then a vehicle behind them flashing its sirens.
It wasnt police officers stopping them. It was two Taxi and Limousine Commission inspectors, enforcement agents tasked with policing livery cars and yellow taxis to protect New Yorkers from dangerous and uninsured illegal cabbies.
What many New Yorkers dont know is TLC inspectors also have the power to seize a vehicle they suspect of operating as an illegal cab.
The inspectors separated Kareeal and Natalie. They accused him of being an unlicensed hack. They asked Natalie whether she was a paying passenger and, if not, to prove how she knew him.
She told them my name, address, Social Security number, Kareeal, a Barclays Center security guard, recalled. They didnt want to hear it. They still took the vehicle.
The inspectors seized Kareeals car and issued him a summons for being an unlicensed cabbie. Stranded, the Akins made the hour-and-a-half walk back to Sheepshead Bay as temperatures hovered in the low teens.
By the time I got home, I had like frostbite, Natalie said.
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The Akins arent the only ones to have their lives upended by TLC inspectors. A DNAinfo New York review of decisions by the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings' Taxi and Limousine Tribunal judges shows that in the past year and a half, hundreds of people going about their daily routines had their cars seized because TLC inspectors suspected they were unlicensed cabbies.
DNAinfo found that, between Jan. 1, 2013, and June 13, 2014, the tribunal adjudicated 7,187 cases involving accusations that a driver was operating an illegal cab or the owner of the car allowed someone to use their vehicle as one.
Tribunal judges who are independent decision makers dismissed 1,442 of those cases. Many of them were dismissed because the inspectors didnt follow the law or ignored the explanation of the driver or passenger. Of those, 176 drivers had their cases dismissed after proving that their passengers were family members, friends or neighbors.
They included a retired MTA worker dropping off his girlfriend at her job at the Queens racino, an Astoria dad taking his teenage daughter and her friend to school and a Brooklyn retiree who volunteers at a convent giving nuns a lift to JFK Airport in his minivan.
While the drivers proved their innocence, they still had their vehicles temporarily seized and either went without a car for weeks while they awaited their hearing at the tribunal in Long Island City or shelled out hefty sums to get it back from the impound lot.
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In one case, inspectors seized the car of a Japanese man who was showing his three non-English-speaking friends visiting from Japan around the city. The inspectors relied on the passengers English-Japanese translation book to question them.
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Inspectors seized Cirilo Fortunatos sons minivan last year when he borrowed it to drop off nuns who were visiting from another country at JFK.
The 70-year-old retiree volunteers for an order of Catholic nuns who run Centro Maria, a Hell's Kitchen residence for young women. Every Friday, Fortunato drives 29 miles outside the city to pick up bread thats donated to the sisters. However, last July the order asked him to take two nuns to the airport because its car wasnt working that day.
The way it was explained to me, some of [the nuns] come from countries with a lot of crime so they don't feel safe getting in a taxi," said Fortunato, who speaks limited English. "The nuns ask me to drive them so that they don't have to get a taxi."
Fortunatos sons car was seized and he spent three hours getting back to his Coney Island home.
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By December 2013, halfway through the citys 2014 fiscal year, TLC inspectors had seized 4,470 vehicles, according to an agency press release. By comparison, inspectors seized 1,222 vehicles for the entire 2010 fiscal year, records show.
The seizures are a revenue producer for the city. Accused drivers or the owners of the allegedly illegal cab can plead guilty, but must pay a fine of at least $600 and hundreds of dollars more for the cost of towing and impoundment.
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Normally, defendants who win get paperwork so they can immediately retrieve their cars. But when Brunson went the next day to Knights Towings impound lot in Bushwick, he was told that the TLC hadnt signed off yet. He said he had to wait three more days and was forced to pay $320 in impound fees.
The only thing they're interested in is taking your car away and making you pay money, Brunson said.
He and his girlfriend are both black. He believes that the TLC inspectors racially profiled him.
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When I went to court, 95 percent of the people there were immigrants and minorities, just hardworking people trying to make a living, Brunson said.
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/201...d-hundreds-of-being-illegal-cabbies-past-year
Black Man Driving Wife to Work Accused of Being Illegal Cab Driver: Lawsuit
City investigators wrongfully accused a black man of being an illegal taxi driver after they spotted him dropping off his wife at work, believing she was a white livery cab passenger, a lawsuit charges.
Married couple Dan Keys Jr., 66, and Symone Palermo, 53, are suing the Taxi and Limousine Commission for $3 million, claiming that in an act of racial profiling its agents seized their Lincoln Town Car for eight days and gave each of them summonses despite their attempts to explain they are husband and wife.
The couple claims that TLC investigators pulled over Keys, a car salesman, because they mistook Palermo, who is biracial, for being white and assumed she was a customer.
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/201...k-accused-of-being-illegal-cab-driver-lawsuit
On Sept. 2 last year, two Taxi and Limousine Commission inspectors pulled over a driver in Midtown they suspected of being an illegal cabbie. Little did they know the driver's passenger was one of the wealthiest princes in the world.
The driver, Ibrahim Senturk, was a handyman who works for Qatars consulate in New York. He was taking a son of the countrys billionaire king and another person to a gym on the west side of Manhattan.
The inspectors didnt buy that Senturk was a private driver. They slapped him with a summons for being an illegal taxi driver and seized his Chevrolet Suburban, stranding the prince on the corner of East 53rd Street and Third Avenue.
Six weeks later, Senturk proved his identity to a judge during his hearing at the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings Taxi and Limousine Tribunal in Long Island City.
The judge dismissed the case, noting that Senturk was simply an employee of the Qatari consulate, legally performing his job duties.
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Sometimes inspectors put the brakes on a vehicle seizure when they realize a passenger is famous.
TLC enforcement sources said that last month inspectors at LaGuardia pulled the plug on the seizure of a car because the passenger was Giants wide-receiver Mario Manningham.
The sources said the inspectors superior told them to let the driver go because they didnt want to draw attention to the TLC, which has been taking heat for its seizure program.
Mario Manninghams driver got a break because he was going to bring some negative press, a source said.
http://dnainfo.com/new-york/2014072...s-snare-prince-from-qatar-fashion-billionaire
