How Some Illegal Taxi Drivers Are Fighting Back Against the Green Cab Program

Perhaps understandably, TLC officials don't often talk publicly about their face-offs with unlicensed drivers, although the battle between illegal taxis and city enforcers has been going on for decades. TLC officers are currently required to complete a 10-week training program before they head out to the streets. In the program, prospective officers learn the commission's rules and regulations, as well as how to defend themselves against attacks like those described by Emmanuel. When they're on patrol, they wear bulletproof vests and carry batons and pepper spray. TLC Chief Operating Officer Conan Freud says officers are required to report any damage to their vehicles and that there have been no reports of damaged tires or oil-slicked cars. But, he adds, "I'm not going to say it never takes place."

David Yassky, who served as TLC commissioner from 2010 to 2014 under former mayor Michael Bloomberg, is more open about the abuses the TLC officers faced battling illegal cabs under his tenure. "Without question, they sometimes encountered hostility from people who don't want to be penalized for breaking the law," he tells the Voice. The TLC did not make current commissioner Meera Joshi available for interviews.

But TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg acknowledges that sometimes inspectors do get injured in the field. One way, he says, is when drivers attempt to pull away after being stopped — just as Emmanuel did in the incident that occurred before Christmas. "Once the driver realizes they're going to get a summons or they're going to be seized, sometimes they try to pull away and the door is open so it will strike the inspector, or their feet or legs will be run over," says Fromberg. "Taking the keys out of the vehicle is one way of slowing things down."

The city has been trying to eradicate the unlicensed-cab problem since at least the 1960s, though illegal taxis have been around for much longer. When metered cabs first started operating in New York in 1907, there was little regulation, and illegal drivers began popping up almost immediately. By the 1930s, these unlicensed cabs had a name: "wildcat taxis." The wildcat drivers were known for dramatically reducing fare prices and taking business away from the legitimate taxi services. Even so, the licensed cab industry thrived, and by the '60s its success had occasioned a new set of problems. For one, drivers felt emboldened to refuse service to passengers, and often, the decision to accept or reject a fare was based on destination. Cabbies just didn't want to go to the outer boroughs. This opened up opportunities for illegal drivers to serve those areas, mainly in Brooklyn and Queens. Around 1964, these unlicensed car services started being known as "gypsy cabs." New York State Assemblyman Jose Rivera, himself a former unlicensed driver and organizer, says the name likely stems from the fact that illegal taxi drivers in New York have largely been immigrants.

As the number of illegal-cab drivers swelled in the late 1960s, the city tried to institute some regulations. In 1967, the city ordered official taxis — those that had a medallion, or permit, to operate — to paint their cars yellow, and unlicensed cabs to paint their cars a different color, so riders could know who was legitimate. The unlicensed drivers reacted angrily to the change, attacking 14 licensed taxis in Brownsville and Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, according to a New York Times report at the time. Some licensed cabs were overturned, and others were set on fire. Then-mayor John Lindsay responded by offering full police protection to all legal taxis. But he also sought to appease the illegal drivers — many of whom wanted to be legal but were unable to obtain licenses — by telling them he thought the law was unfair.

In 1971 the city created the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and the agency's first chairman, Michael Lazar, announced he had a plan to put "an end to the city's gypsy-cab problem." He suggested all such cabs become fully legal by agreeing to no longer take "street hails." Instead, they would only serve passengers who called and arranged trips ahead of time. But this plan didn't mollify the unlicensed drivers, either. Up to 50 of them, upset over the possibility of losing their cruising business, responded by organizing protests in the South Bronx. When firemen responded to a blaze lit during one of the protests, they were hit with bottles and bricks. Lazar's legalize-the-gypsies initiative — which was immediately opposed by the yellow-cab industry, too — was eventually scrapped.

In 1976, urban planner Charles Vidich, who had completed several studies on the city's taxi industry for Lindsay, published a book called The New York Cab Driver and His Fare. According to Vidich, eliminating unlicensed cabs from the city was nearly impossible. "For every law squelching the illegal activity or possible encroachment of private livery operations into the medallioned domain, there have arisen a dozen forms of new deception and subterfuge," he wrote. Illegal cabs, in other words, could not be stopped.

In 1992, Mayor David Dinkins tried again to address the problem, saying he would increase by six times the amount of money the city was spending to stop unlicensed drivers from stealing legal business. But like other plans before his, Dinkins's proposal garnered little support and was never adopted. Yassky believes the reason unlicensed cabs have persisted for so long is simple: No viable, legal cab services have ever been introduced in the outer boroughs.

"When you have a legal way," he says, "the market will gravitate toward the legal."

During the last two years of his final term as mayor, Bloomberg decided he would try to tackle the illegal-taxi problem. But this time the plan involved putting more legitimate cars on the streets. Thousands of city-regulated, lime green–colored cabs would be dispatched to the outer boroughs and would finally create a market force that would push the illegal cabs out of business. A TLC analysis released in 2012 found that 95 percent of yellow-taxi pickups happened either in central and Lower Manhattan or at airports, leaving the outer boroughs badly underserved. Under the green-cab program, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island would at last have regular access to legal, city-approved taxis. The plan, first mentioned in Bloomberg's State of the City address in 2011, would eventually call for the release of 18,000 green cabs, to be rolled out in blocks of 6,000, over the following three years. Yassky was tasked with implementing the initiative.

Like the yellow cabs — of which there are 13,000 currently operating in New York City, according to TLC numbers — the green cabs would be operated by private companies or individuals, and would be regulated by the city. Also like yellow cabs, they would be allowed to pick up passengers who hailed them from the street. These particulars differentiated the green cabs from the city's massive "for-hire" fleet, which comprises more than 51,000 livery cars, black cars, and luxury limousines, and now also includes the vehicles associated with ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft. These for-hire cars take only passengers who arrange their trips ahead of time. They do not have medallions from the city, but instead are associated with a private base station (excluding Uber and Lyft). The base station provides its drivers with services that include parking, insurance, and a two-way radio or mobile device to communicate with a dispatcher. Drivers of these cars indicate that they are legal and for-hire by affixing stickers to their windows that include their base name, its operating license number, and its telephone number.

The so-called gypsy cabs don't have these markings. Their drivers generally operate solo and without any insurance. They generally aren't regulated in any way. Today, no numbers exist on how many unlicensed cabs roam the streets of New York City, but the TLC estimated in 2011 that as many as 150,000 illegal street-hail pickups take place every day. The TLC hoped its new green cabs could replace every one of those illegal street hails.

While plans for the green-cab initiative were initially floated in 2011, the program's implementation was slowed after yellow-cab owners sued the city in 2012, citing concerns that green cabs would hurt their business. At the time, the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which filed the suit on behalf of yellow-cab owners, argued that the law authorizing the green-cab fleet was unfairly passed in Albany by legislators and the governor, rather than by the City Council. "The city sold the exclusive rights of street hails to medallion owners," MTBT spokesman Michael Woloz said in a statement issued at the time. "In one fell swoop...that right was taken away."

But in June 2013, the New York State Court of Appeals overturned a lower-court ruling in favor of the MTBT and upheld the law authorizing green cabs, allowing plans for the outer-borough taxi program to move forward. Yassky said the concerns expressed by yellow-cab owners were unfounded. "In general, cartels try to protect their territory against even theoretical incursions," he tells the Voice.

When the green cabs finally arrived, in August 2013, they were met with immediate praise from residents of the outer boroughs, where more than 80 percent of the city's population resides, according to U.S. Census data. In the program's first year, the green cabs collectively made more than 43,000 trips a day. They flocked to popular neighborhoods like Williamsburg and Harlem and Astoria, though they also fanned out into the further reaches of the outer boroughs. And they proved that they weren't a major threat to yellow taxis, which only saw their fares and tips dip by 2 percent from the previous year.

The launch of the first green cabs brought greater TLC enforcement of illegal cabs — the commission added 70 inspectors to its existing team of 100. It also hired its own private towing system, which has sped up enforcement. Meanwhile, special attention was added to "high-volume areas" and "transportation hubs," says the TLC's Fromberg. Both descriptions fit Emmanuel's busy corner in Bed-Stuy.

The success of the green-cab initiative was a worst-case scenario for Emmanuel and his crew, who now fear the impending rollout of additional cars. "If that happens, we're done for," he says of his crew. The additional cars, he worries, will not only take more of his business, but will also lead to even more intense TLC enforcement concerning unlicensed cabs. But Emmanuel remains unconvinced that all the green cabs that have been promised will arrive — not if the powerful yellow-cab lobby has anything to say about it.

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