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Operation RefusalGiuliani's sorry crackdown on New York City's taxi drivers.

By Dan Ackman
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2007, at 12:15 PM ET
Rudy Giuliani. Click image to expand.

When he is not billing himself as the 9/11 candidate, Rudolph Giuliani bills himself as a law and order candidate. But when he was mayor of New York, Giuliani often acted as if law was for other people. Before he's handed the reins to the war on terror, the mayor's willingness to impose harsh and even illegal rules should be well understood. Giuliani's crackdown on taxi drivers—nearly all immigrants without a political stronghold—is a case in point.

The mayor's hostility to New York's cabbies started after his re-election. Beginning in 1998, the city enacted new rules that increased penalties on taxi drivers for reckless driving. Some cabbies threatened a work action (cab drivers have no union, so they cannot technically strike). Giuliani and the NYPD "crushed" it, as the tabloids put it, and the mayor bragged that he had "destroyed" the strike. With Giuliani nodding at his side, NYPD Commissioner Howard Safir compared the cabbies to a "terrorist threat."

The new rules were popular—most New Yorkers felt that taxi drivers did drive too fast. They were upheld by the courts, too, though the city was later found liable for violating the cabbies' right to freely assemble when it blocked their planned protest. With one crackdown under his belt, Giuliani was emboldened.

In November 1999, just as Giuliani geared up his Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton, movie star Danny Glover protested publicly that city cab drivers had bypassed him and other African-Americans. Such discrimination was certainly a problem, and in fact had been against the law for years. Within a week of Glover's charge, the mayor held a hastily planned press conference heralding "Operation Refusal": a new crackdown on cabbies who allegedly refused service. "We will take your cab away from you," he warned.

Announcing the plan, Giuliani praised his own political courage, predicting "screams and howls," and boasting of how solving problems others found intractable gave him "a great deal of satisfaction." Then he set about casting aside city procedures, taxi regulations, and the Constitution. While Giuliani assured the public, "We are perfectly entitled to do this," his taxi commissioner began to seize cabs, suspend licenses on the spot without any hearing, and revoke the licenses of cabbies found guilty by taxi commission judges. Headlines hailed the mayor for taking on "racist cabbies." For Giuliani, fresh from scandals involving Abner Louima and Amadou Diallou, both black victims of police brutality, it was all good politics.

But even as Giuliani was announcing the plan, his aides were drafting memos questioning the legality of the penalty scheme. This time, there were no public hearings, and the board of the taxi commission was not even consulted. Five hundred drivers had their licenses suspended. Almost 100 had their licenses revoked. Their livelihoods disappeared in a flash.

It took three years from the crackdown for a federal judge to declare the mayor's suspensions of the cabbies' licenses without hearings unconstitutional, in response to a lawsuit in which I represented the drivers. Finally, in 2006, the city agreed to a settlement by which it paid the cabbies it had suspended $7 million in damages. Along the way, the evidence showed that just 15 percent of the alleged refusals to pick up passengers involved race. The vast majority were based on destination.

The mayor, of course, knew better from the start, or should have known better. The taxi commission's own studies indicated that most refusals of service were based on destination, not race. Meanwhile, for all his bluster about taking cabs, the mayor knew that the vast majority of the cabs seized were owned not by the cabbies who were doing the driving but by owners of taxi medallions. The city was careful to quickly return the cabs to those owners, a more formidable group compared to the hapless cabbies, as quickly as possible.

As the Operation Refusal lawsuit progressed, city lawyers hid critical documents, such as the taxi commission's internal penalty guideline and the City Hall staff memos, and persistently fought demands that Giuliani answer questions. Operation Refusal was the work of underlings, they said. He was too busy, they said—never mind that he was now out of office and was making millions as a private citizen consulting and giving speeches. As a former "high public official," the former mayor should be immune, they argued.

Finally, in 2005, after the stonewalling became too egregious to ignore, a federal magistrate judge ordered Giuliani to testify. By this time, Giuliani was gearing up for his presidential campaign. His memory of Operation Refusal was hazy, he testified in a deposition, his tone now subdued. He said he could not even recall whether the plan was his idea.

All told, Giuliani testified that he could not recall 88 separate times. It was the kind of performance the once-crusading prosecutor would have mocked and derided. Except now, he was the one giving it.

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Dan Ackman is a lawyer and journalist based in Jersey City, N.J.
Photograph of Rudy Giuliani by Les Stone. Photograph of taxi on Slate's home page by Getty Creative Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Most cabbies are not racists. Many BLACK cab-drivers refused to pick up African-Americans whom they judged to be a security risk. After all, the cost to a potential black customer who is misjudged is a slight inconvenience. The cost to a cabbie who misjudges is a bullet in the skull. Easy to throw around accusations of racism from behind the comfort of the keyboard. Hard to risk your life driving a cab.

--MisterPerson

(To reply, click here.)

I like how the fact that the author has a direct interest in presenting Giulani as in the wrong is buried in the 7th paragraph. That's kind of a crucial thing to know, and should probably have been put at the front of the article, or at least mentioned with a "Full Disclosure" type clause, indicating that the author is not a neutral observer, but rather a party directly involved in the "controversy."

Also the fact that 85% of the taxi drivers refused based on location does not mean they were not guilty of racism. As a New York resident I frankly don't understand why cabbies are allowed to deny you entry to their cab based on the location you want to go to. Sometimes they give me a rationale like they are about to go off duty and are trying to squeeze in one more fare on their way back to where they park the cab (which still seems like it violates the "Passenger's Bill of Rights" prominently displayed in every cab which explicitly states that the driver has no right to refuse to take you anywhere in the 5 boroughs). Other times they simply don't want to go where you're going.

I'd imagine that the latter was very often the case in the 85% of cases where cabbies didn't want to go where their black passengers were going; there is probably some mix of both racism, fear and profit making cabbies in, say, Manhattan not want to take a fare out to Brooklyn or the Bronx or up to Harlem. But at any rate, they took the job as a medallion cabbie, which entails taking a passenger anywhere they want to go in New York. If they were breaking the rules for whatever reason, disciplinary action seems warranted. If it was racially motivated, then it seems particularly reprehensible. And it's not exactly as if blacks in New York City represent some sort of oligarchy that can push around the Mayor to do whatever they want.

--garbagecowboy

(To reply, click here.)

Not only is the article biased but frankly, it's counter-persuasive. I think people would be more likely to vote for Giuliani than against him based on this article.

The author's underlying premise is that there really never was a problem with blacks not being able to get cabs in New York City. Since I've never been a black man trying to hail a cab in New York City, I obviously cannot speak to this issue from firsthand experience. I do know, however, that ever since I became aware, as an adolescent, of racial tensions in America, I have heard complaints and read numerous articles about blacks not being able to get cabs in New York City. Have they all been lies and overreactions? Danny Glover doesn't exactly strike me as Mr. Angry Militant Whitey-Hating Black Man.

Some of you may remember a stunt pulled by liberal documentarian Michael Moore on his reality-based telvision show, "TV Nation". He went to New York and filmed prominent black actor Yaphet Kotto attempting to hail a cab. Countless cabs passed him by without pulling over. He then had a white convicted felon try to hail a cab. Many more cabs pulled over for the white felon than for Mr. Kotto.

I think we can all agree that Michael Moore is not going to be casting a vote for Rudy Guiliani anytime soon. But what his exercise demonstrated was that the problem with blacks not being able to get cabs in New York City was not a figment of Rudy Guiliani's imagination, contrary to what the cabbies' lawyer would have you believe. How is it that the author can say that the reason why most blacks can't get a cab is because the cab driver isn't going to their particular destination, if the cab driver will not even pull over to ask the black man where he wants to go? And, if a cab driver specifically chooses not to go to areas of town where there is large black population, then the explanation of "not going to that destination" is not really a race-neutral one, is it?

I have less trouble believing the second part of the author's argument: that Giuliani was being too hard on the cabbies who were accused of violated the policy, and the harshness was for political gain. I have no doubt that Giuliani had to have known that cracking down on racist cabbies would have improved his position with black voters, and this may have even been driving the policy. But so what? This is how things are supposed to work in a democracy. If a problem exists among a significant portion of the citizenry, and a politician fixes the problem, the politician should be able to count on some goodwill among the voters whom he helped. From what has been described, it sounds like Giuliani helped solve a very significant problem affecting the black residents of New York City. It shouldn't be pooh-poohed simply because it may have been politically motivated.

As far the idea that his crackdown was unfair and violated the rights of the cabbies, this is what the courts are for. And apparently, Giuliani went too far. I don't see this as a legitimate reason to vote against him. As a government lawyer, I know firsthand that it's very easy to "go to far" in remedying problems. There are very few "bright lines" in the area of due process. At the end of the day, all you can do is implement a policy that you think is fair, just, and legal, and hope the courts agree. It doesn't always happen that way. But it doesn't mean that you were acting maliciously.

Make no mistake, I am not a Guiliani supporter. But honestly, if you're trying to offer reasons not to vote for Guiliani, you've got to do better than this.

--CaLawyer

(To reply, click here.)

(12/20)

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