How Some Illegal Taxi Drivers Are Fighting Back Against the Green Cab Program
It was a busy night, two days before Christmas, and the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant were packed with shoppers. So Emmanuel* was out later than usual. He had just picked up one last fare from his corner in Bed-Stuy, which was usually a safe zone, but moments later he was pulled over by a Ford Econoline van. Emmanuel knew the model. It was what New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission officers used when they did undercover sweeps for illegal cab drivers. 
All illustrations by Greg Houston
He also knew what came next: Two TLC officers would approach his car; he'd roll his window down; one of them would reach in and take his key. He would be booked for driving without TLC plates, his car would be impounded, and he'd have to pay a big fine to get it back. The TLC had recently begun cracking down on illegal, or "gypsy," cab drivers, more than ever before, and this was its modus operandi. So, as the van idled behind him, and as the TLC officers appeared to call for backup, Emmanuel quietly shifted into drive, stepped hard on the gas, and peeled off. The officers, caught flat-footed, didn't even try to chase him.
"If they're young and they're new, they might want to chase you," Emmanuel says later, from inside his black Crown Victoria, a car the Ford Motor Company produced from 1992 until 2011, mainly for law enforcement and taxi drivers. His is a 2008 model, and the inside is pristine, with deep leather seats and a steering wheel wrapped in a black leather cover. The car has never given him a problem in the two and a half years he's been driving it, he brags, adding that it's much faster than the TLC agents' undercover vehicles — typically a Ford Focus or an Econoline. "The cars that they drive could never compete with this car," he says. "This car holds about 320 horses in the engine." The fastest he's ever driven it, he says, is 140 mph.
Emmanuel and about a dozen other drivers share a busy corner in Bed-Stuy, just more than a mile from the Barclays Center. From there they can pick up a steady stream of passengers returning from work. Some of the drivers on the corner are not licensed to operate cabs, and although some do have the required TLC plates, all of them operate illegally in one way or another. To protect themselves against the increasing TLC enforcement, they have formed a crew.
Emmanuel, 29, has been on the corner the longest, since 2011. He is the de facto leader of the group. A native of Flatbush, he's an imposing figure, at almost 300 pounds, with a shaved head and a fuzzy chinstrap beard. He has worked various jobs — most recently at a Starbucks and then a Lowe's — but he became an unlicensed cab driver after realizing he didn't like working under somebody else. Now he's the boss of a whole crew. A single father, Emmanuel is always willing to give advice to the younger drivers, mostly about how to protect one another from the emerging threats to their enterprise.
On some days, "protection" means popping the tires of one of the city's growing number of "green cabs," some of which have started trying to pick up passengers on Emmanuel's corner, the exact cross streets of which he disclosed to the Voice on the condition that it not be shared for publication. On other days it means doing the same to the TLC officers' vehicles. On occasion, Emmanuel says, he and his crew will give a TLC car what they call an "oil change." This entails waiting until the officers are out of the vehicle, then pouring motor oil over the windshield, making the car almost undrivable. Some of the drivers have also started to carry Mace, which doubles as a safeguard against dangerous passengers and a potential weapon to use on TLC officers.
But most of the time, Emmanuel's job means coordinating evasions of the authorities. His efforts initially earned him the nickname "The Enforcer," a sobriquet he now uses to describe a younger driver named Alex*, another member of the crew. Alex, who wears dreads and is half Emmanuel's size, does all the tire-popping and "oil changing" these days. "You know what I do to TLC?" says Alex, letting out a high-pitched laugh. "I give them a hard time."
Emmanuel says having Alex do the dirty work only makes sense. "You can't have a 6-foot-1, 270-pound dude flatten a tire; you're going to see him as soon as he goes down," he says. Emmanuel is big, but looks even bigger in his oversized gray sweatshirt, baggy jeans, and skullcap. "I tell them what to do. But I never get my hands dirty." Alex, he adds, "gets a thrill out of doing it."
With the green cabs — cheaper, city-licensed taxis that serve only the outer boroughs — starting to encroach on their turf, protection seems needed on the corner more than ever. The neighborhood has also begun to change, bringing withit more enforcement. "At one point it was so easy...TLC wasn't enforcing at all," Emmanuel says. "But then they added the Barclays Center, they added major attractions that they know people will use taxis to get to....Then they started coming out like crazy."
* We spoke to many drivers who requested that we not use their real names. All such drivers are referred to by pseudonyms.
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