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Shopping Cart Toss Mall Rejected Livery Cab Stand Plan, Officials Say

By DNAinfo Staff on January 31, 2012 7:54pm

One of the livery stands at the Gateway Center at the Bronx Terminal Market.
One of the livery stands at the Gateway Center at the Bronx Terminal Market.
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DNAinfo/Yardena Schwartz

By Yardena Schwartz, Sonja Sharp and Amy Zimmer

DNAinfo Reporters

MOTT HAVEN — The Taxi & Limousine Commission had been in talks to create a livery stand system at the site of Monday's shopping cart attack that left two livery drivers in the hospital with head injuries — but the mall that owns the property rejected the offer.

The attack on Louceny Camara, 52, and Ibrahima Sagne, 30 at the Gateway Center, on 149th Street and River Avenue, came amid a turf war between two sets of cabbies there — one of which is sanctioned by the shopping center and the other which is not, drivers told DNAinfo.

The TLC, which had been working with malls across the city on livery stand plans, had been in conversations with Gateway in "late December 2010 to early 2011" about implementing a system, according to TLC Commissioner David Yassky.

But Gateway ultimately declined to adopt the plan, he said.

Since 2009, the mall, at the site of the old Bronx Terminal Market, has had its own version of a livery stand, entering into an agreement with a dispatching service, Diplo, which lines up licensed TLC livery cars in the garage and places customers in cars, a spokeswoman for Gateway explained.

But in addition to Diplo's drivers, there were also several independent cabbies who operated at the mall, including the victims, who were not licensed, according to the TLC.

The competition for customers has sparked beefs between the factions, according to drivers and  Fernando Mateo, the spokesman for the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, who said that the problem was common at other sites across the city.

"You have a turf war of illegal cab drivers versus legal cab drivers," said Mateo, adding that his organization had warned the TLC and the mall about the problem, but nothing was done.

"They knew what was brewing," he said of Gateway.

But the TLC said that the agency had not received any complaints about problems with the drivers at the mall.

"We have not gotten complaints about Gateway in particular," Yassky said. "Certainly, there is often tension and often conflict between livery drivers at hotspots like malls and subway spots."

Yassky said the city's recently approved "five borough taxi plan" to issue 18,000 permits to livery cabs, allowing them to pick up street hails in the outer-boroughs and northern Manhattan, will help what's become a "Wild West atmosphere" at many malls.

Cops are hunting for at least one suspect in Monday's incident, where a shopping cart tossed from a parking garage at the mall left Camara, 52, and Sagne, 30, hospitalized.  No connection has yet been made linking the shopping cart attack to the turf battles.

The fights among drivers at Gateway Center extend beyond the Diplo drivers and the other cabbies.

Barry Sadu, a driver for Diplo, said he was punched in the face last month by another Diplo driver over a fare.

Not realizing the other driver quoted a $30 fare, Sadu won the customer by offering to drive for $15. When he started loading the car, the other driver socked him, he claimed.

"It's hard for us here," Sadu said.