From the Chicago Dispatcher, January 2009

From the Editor's Desk
A Typical Situation
The story of Omar and his tickets.

By: Jonathan Bullington

The other day I met a cabdriver named Omar. Omar came to my office and showed me some tickets he had received. As the story goes, he was pulled over at Monroe and Canal. The officer who stopped him examined his cab and asked why his chauffeur license wasn't straight in its holder.

It was there, in the proper holder, plain for all to see. Yet it was crooked. He tried to explain to this officer that driving over a speed bump could have caused the license to shift in its holder, but it didn't matter. Omar's a cabdriver - so Omar got a ticket for an improperly displayed chauffeur's license.

The officer next questioned why his passenger side headlight was out. He didn't know why. His taxi had been in the shop recently, maybe that caused the outage? He never actually confirmed the light was out. The officer didn't show him and later on, when he turned it on, it worked fine. None of this matters, of course, because Omar got a ticket for a busted light.

This officer asked him to sign his two tickets - he asked her to explain why he was being fined before he signed anything. So what did she do? If you guessed she gave Omar another ticket, you'd be right. Omar got another ticket, this one for the dreaded “discourtesy charge,” that mysterious allegation that can mean many different things to many different people.

Things only got worse for Omar. After these three tickets, Omar had to go back to inspection, where (guess what???) he got more tickets - three to be exact. One came for not having leather or vinyl seats, one came for having a very small crack in the frame of his meter (in the frame mind you; the meter worked fine), and one for his top light not going on with the meter (he has a manual switch, by the way, so his top light did illuminate, just not automatically).

Ouch! Six tickets in the span of two months, costing Omar $1,000 of his hard earned money. Of course, he did have his “day in court,” if you consider a trip to 400 W. Superior as anything other than a trip to a bank with a deposit-only policy, which most people don't. Strangely, Omar actually seemed lucky at one point. He was able to successfully clear up a misunderstanding with his hearing date that almost cost him an additional $1,000.

As I listened to his story, I thought of how absurd it is to make someone pay that much money for such minor violations, none of which put anyone in any kind of real danger, or even perceived danger for that matter. Whatever happened to punishments fitting crimes? I always thought that was a pretty good idea.

It wasn't until later, however, when I realized the worst part of Omar's story. You see, I tell you this story because it's unusual, and the unusual thing about it is that it's not unusual at all. This same thing has been and is happening to Chicago cabdrivers all the time. Sadly, it has become commonplace for Chicago cabdrivers to pay thousands of dollars in fines for offenses that could probably be corrected with 20 minutes and a warning. Perhaps more depressing than that: efforts that could be used to reverse this trend are being wasted elsewhere. Until that changes, expect more tickets and bigger fines.

This is a typical situation. Where does the money go that was collected? It is legal to license for regulation costs. However, how much of a profit does the city need? How much before it's just plain ol' robbery?

I will have to commend George, as it did take guts to let this article be published.

The issues of the camera images, MPEA, outrageous fines, and few others should top the list of things that need to be questioned. I feel the amounts of the fines are excessive. The problem of rip off fines issued by the administrative hearings dept. isn't just a taxi one. All kinds of businesses, property owners, and just regular folk are able to be fined by these crooks. Fine to regulate and control is acceptable. Fine heavily to profit should be against the law. It might be time to go to the feds.