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Hailing a cab, flying a sign

Tuesday, June 26 at 12:01 AM

This Speakout has not been edited

By Rhonda Hackett, Lakewood

Ask someone to conjure an image of New York City and chances are part of their mental picture will include bustling city streets with harried adults stepping out into traffic hailing one of the city’s infamous hard-to-come-by yellow cabs. It’s a New Yorker’s god-given right to do so.

Per Denver City Council Member, Judy Montero, Denverite’s and visitors to our Mile High City should be able to legally hail a cab from a street corner just like our Big Apple counterparts. Indeed, Denver’s Public Works Committee is working to grant Montero’s wish. This week the committee moved one step closer to allowing taxi’s to stop in a lane of traffic for up to 90 seconds to pick up a fare. Until now, doing so has been considered illegal potentially resulting in the offending cab driver being fined, sometimes to the tune of $200. Councilwoman Montero introduced the ordinance in part, she says, because visitors to next year’s Democratic National Convention will be coming from cities where it is legal for taxi’s to stop in traffic to pick up their fares, and so, Denver should follow suit. The Councilwoman asserts passing this ordinance is simply good customer service.

Along with the taxi cab hailers in the mental picture of New York City, most people will also envision street beggars flying signs asking for money. It is also a New Yorker’s state-given legal right to do so. Panhandlers in Denver have no such right. Flying a sign in Denver is considered an illegal act punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment.

City Councilwoman Montero was one of a majority of city council members who voted back in January 2006 to outlaw panhandling in Denver. Among other reasons offered in support of banning the behavior largely engaged in by poor people, council was adamant in its assertion that people begging for money on street corners sometimes step out into traffic thereby causing obvious threats to public safety. When community leaders and activists objected to targeting the poor in this manner, we were told repeatedly that public safety took precedence over any alleged attack on poor peoples civil rights.

If Denver City Council passes this latest ordinance they are in effect saying that the act of a person hailing a cab from a street corner, the cab stopping in a moving traffic lane to wait for the person to step onto the street and into the cab, is wholly and substantially different than the act of a person standing on a street corner hailing drivers asking for a donation, and stepping into the street to accept a contribution from the driver. Clearly, the only thing wholly and substantially different with the latter is the simple fact that the person doing the hailing is poor and begging and not a presumed contributing member of society with the means to pay for travel via a taxi cab. Another, perhaps not-so-minor difference is the fact that most people offering money to panhandlers are stopped at red traffic lights, whereas taxis will be able to stop in moving lanes of traffic. Isn’t it obvious which of the two causes the greater threat to public safety?

How can a city purporting to be attuned to the perils of its homeless population make illegal a behavior engaged in almost exclusively by the homeless, pass an ordinance that allows essentially the same physical behavior primarily engaged in by non-homeless people and not see the obvious hypocrisy in doing so? If Denver’s City Council can get rid of what Bill Mitchell, Director of Government and Community Affairs for the Denver Metro Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, calls an “arcane ordinance” in the name of good customer service, it must act to repeal the discriminatory ordinance passed just 18 short months ago outlawing panhandling and considered by many of us to be equally arcane.

READER COMMENTS

The important difference between the panhandler and the cabbie is that the cabbie is engaged in commerce, legal business. The person who hails the cab receives transportation, a legal service, and the cab driver provides that service. The panhandler is merely there to obtain money without giving anything in return. Panhandling is against most city's laws and people here for a convention or just downtown for a day are being pestered to give something for nothing. Actually they do get something...they get left alone if they give enough at one corner but there is another corner, and another sign holder up ahead.
Keep the prohibition against panhandlers in the street and we do have a good, safety based reason. The cab driver is in a vehicle which can reasonably expect to be seen as belonging in the street. The panhandler is a pedestrian and creates a hazard for himself and the drivers.

Posted by momma y on June 26, 2007 06:04 AM