When I say to other cab
drivers that I've worked nights for twenty years and never been robbed, they
either don't believe me or tell me I'm lucky. But, I'm telling the truth. I
haven't been held up and I owe it all to Officer Paul Weiner.
Weiner trained us and
during orientation told us that we had to pick up anybody and everybody who
wanted a cab.
"But isn't that
dangerous?" I asked, "I mean, you can tell that some people are
trouble just by the way they move, they way they look, their gestures, they way
they look at you. "
"You can't tell
nuthin!" Weiner yelled, getting in my face like a Marine Corps drill
sergeant.
"But sometimes you
can see it com -"
"You can't see
nuthin,” he bellowed. "You don't pick ‘em up, it's refusal to convey!
That’s the law!"
The reason I owe my
perfect record to Officer Weiner is that he started me thinking seriously about
how dangerous the job could be and I decided to ignore his rule.
I can see the point of the
law. It's a product of the sixties. It's aimed at racial profiling. And, of
course, you can't convict somebody of a crime because of the way they move or
look. But only a fool would ignore the warning signs of aggressive body
language or a sadistic stare. There is a difference between punishing somebody
and protecting yourself. Are such distinctions too subtle for the law?
Personally, I've never
turned anybody down because of race. In fact, innumerable large, minority men
have told me that I was only cab driver who would pick them up. Contrary to
stereotype, I've usually been tipped very, very well by these people.
The reason I raised my
questions to Weiner in the first place was that I'd been mugged by two
white junkies a couple of years earlier.
The thing is that I saw
them: I saw that they were scumbags: I knew they were dangerous: I could even
see them targeting me.
But I ignored the signs.
Why? Because it was a lovely Sunday afternoon on Hyde & Vallejo streets on
Russian Hill in San Francisco with strolling couples and cable cars passing by
while I was walking home from a Laundromat.
Hyde & Vallejo might
be the safest corner in the world. It never entered my head that I could be
mugged at such a time in such a place. If it had, my rip-off artists would
never have gotten close enough to point a butcher knife at my guts.
One of them walked by me
then turned around holding the knife concealed by his jacket. They other
blocked me from behind. They got $6.00. It was well worth the price for the
lessons they gave me. It’s paid me back a dozen times over since I started
driving cab.
I’ve passed by thugs that
I know have robbed other drivers. When I was working for City Cab a dispatcher
gave me an order at a corner on Cortland to pick up three guys at 2 am. I took
one look at them, drove by and called the dispatcher, telling him not to call
the order again. He called it anyway.
The dirtballs robbed the next cab driver that came along. The dispatcher later claimed that I'd never talked to him. But, of course, the company could have been put in a delicate situation. They might either be busted by Wiener for refusing to call an order or sued by the driver for putting him in harm's way.
The dirtballs robbed the next cab driver that came along. The dispatcher later claimed that I'd never talked to him. But, of course, the company could have been put in a delicate situation. They might either be busted by Wiener for refusing to call an order or sued by the driver for putting him in harm's way.
Whatever – the moral of my tale is: always be aware of your surroundings
and trust your perceptions. Your intuition is smarter than the law and swifter
than your brain.