By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CITY HALL — The city released undercover video footage Wednesday that purports to show cabbies refusing to accept passengers heading to the outer boroughs.
The footage was captured as part of a crackdown on what the city says is a growing problem, and comes days after a Manhattan College grad was allegedly mowed down by a cab driver who refused to take the man and his friends to the Bronx.
Anthony Loreto, 22, whose skull was fractured during the assault, is now in the intensive care unit "fighting for his life," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
Officials said that refusal incidents are way up in the past six months, despite being barred by law.
"It doesn't matter which borough you are coming from or which borough you're going to. If you want to hail a cab, New York City cab drivers are required by law to take you to any destination in the city. Period. End of story," Bloomberg said, equating the refusals to "geographical discrimination."
Every New Yorker knows that you need to get into the taxi before you give the driver your location. But the footage compiled by the Taxi and Limousine Commission and posted on YouTube shows the "secret shopper" passengers asking for a ride while standing on the curb.
In one clip, a cab driver is shown allegedly denying a fare to Brooklyn.
"I don't have a GPS, that's why," he tells the mock passenger.
In another clip, a TLC officer is shown trying to hail a ride to Richmond Hill, Queens.
"You know your way?" the driver asks. When the passenger isn't sure, the driver instructs the passenger to "take somebody else" before speeding away. The driver had two previous violations for illegally refusing fares, the city said.
The mayor is currently pushing the City Council to pass new legislation that would double the refusal fine to $500 for a first offense and $750 and an automatic 30-day license suspension for a second offense in the same 24 months. Offenders lose their licenses altogether if they are caught refusing three fares over 36 months.
City Council Transportation Committee Chair James Vacca said he expects to introduce the legislation later this month, adding that outer boroughs feel "a sense of outrage" that refusals are so commonplace.
His message to cab drivers: "This is unacceptable and this will not be tolerated," he said.
TLC Commissioner David Yassky said fare refusals are currently up more than 36 percent, with 2,128 reported refusals from July 2009 through Feb. 2010 versus 2,887 over the same period the following years.
"I think we're starting to backslide and that's why we're making this push," said Yassky, who blamed the uptick partially on the improving economy, which, he said, increases the likelihood that drivers will lose fares by leaving Manhattan.
To help investigate the problem, Yassky said the TLC bolstered its 100-person enforcement team with students from Baruch College, who stood on Manhattan streets trying to hail cabs to the other boroughs. Of the 260 test hails from January through early February, 50 percent of requests were refused, he said.
Both Bloomberg and Yassky encouraged passengers to report driver refusals to 311 and warned drivers to be on alert.
Bloomberg himself could not remember having been turned down for a fare personally, but credited an expensive (though chivalrous) solution.
Back in 1966, when he dated a woman who lived in Brooklyn Heights, he said he would routinely hail a cab and take her to Brooklyn. Then he would walk her to her door and then take the same cab all the way back to Manhattan.
