TLC security keeps an eye on taxi drivers waiting outside the agency office.

Some drivers seem resigned to the bureaucratic hassles at the TLC and feel a little animosity to the rude clerk they encounter there.

"They don't respect you. They treat you like dirt," said Gurdip Singh, a native of India who began driving a cab two years ago. But he smiled and cheerfully suggested, "Maybe they are not paid well by the city, maybe that is why they are always so mad."

And few drivers doubt the importance of the criminal background checks, which help build the public's trust in the city's drivers. "They check everything. It's almost like a CIA investigation thing," said Becky Calderon of the Bronx as she waited in the line.

"But it's a good thing," she continued. "You hardly ever hear of the TLC giving a license to a crook. I never heard of cabbies hacking people to death. Mostly you hear a lot about how honest the cabbies are, when they turn in stuff that people lost."

 

 

  


PB: Why do the drivers go to TLC?

JT: You got to renew your license. You pay fines. You answer to their summons, all kinds of things. You got to see them when there is a complaint. Anyone can pick up the phone and make a complaint against the cab driver. And, however meaningless the complaint might be, you go and spend the whole day there losing earning.

PB: Why is there so much mistreatment and disrespect against the drivers? All the drivers we spoke with today said the same thing.

JT: You see, it's a big political game. If you are poor, if you're black or immigrants, you have no power in the game. Look at the murder of [Amadou] Diallo [he refers to the recent verdict on the case where four police officers accused of shooting and killing the African immigrant in February 1999 were acquitted]. People don't fear robbers any more. They fear the police. It's the worst police state.

PB: But why taxi drivers?

JT: Because we are poor, most of us are immigrants and colored people. And we don't have much political lobby. They can do anything they want [to you].