Claims of police harassment deserve closer scrutiny

On the morning of Thursday, June 20, Page Three of the Toronto Sun smacked my eyes with the glowering photograph of taxi driver Amir Ebrahimi, waving three tickets he was issued by the Toronto Police in one day.

Ebrahimi also had lots to say.

The cops are harassing cabbies because they speak English poorly and have no union, he said. "They don't care about us because we are landed immigrants. If we were Canadian, they would be nice to us. They don't like us," the Iranian-born Ebrahimi said.

Beside the Sun's sidebar story about Ebrahimi was Ian Robertson's larger piece titled "Police Hate Us: Cabbies/ Report Claims Some Cops Racist." This story opened with the statement "Racial bigotry drives some Toronto Police officers to treat taxi drivers badly, claims a report to today's police service board meeting." The play behind all of this was the introduction of yet another report by the same three academics, who, in February 2008, based on "a convenience survey" of a few dozen taxi drivers in Toronto and Mississauga, produced a weak, left-of-centre analysis of the workings of our industry. Now they're back with more of "the first systemic attempt" to study the industry in 10 years. “The report seeks to provide a rounded picture of these drivers as low-income racialized workers ...”

Racialized workers, say the professors... Let's consider what some might consider a rude question: When was the last time anyone saw a white, Anglo-Saxon taxi driver under the age of fifty in Toronto?

There aren't any, or there are almost none. Right? They're like Jewish heavyweights and the Dodo bird. They're gone from Toronto - extinct - or are almost so. And for some time now.

Racialized workers? Yup, if I understand the term. But who did that to them? The cops? I think not. Who was it who created a supposed $2.83-an-hour, 77-hour-a-week vocation for these immigrants? Who acted upon the 1982 report, the 1987 report, the 1998 review, all of which cut the pie and cut the pie and cut the pie, till now, as the pie itself shrinks in the form of a "soft landing" recession, drivers like Amir Ebrahimi are becoming angrier and angrier at the unfair lot they have been handed. The inability to make any sort of reasonable living is upon us. Bankruptcy looms ahead for some, likely many...

It was good to see H. Moscoe going on about many drivers believing "they are a racialized industry." That certainly means help is on the way, doesn't it? I really do admire Howie's ability to manage almost any situation that can be turned to his own smiling advantage.

I feel sorry for guys like Amir Ebrahimi. They're being exploited from the get-go by the City itself, but they don't see that, or they don't understand it properly.

The cops, who are hands on, are right there to be the bad guys. Their job is to enforce the laws the politicians enact. "Only 21% of the city's cabbies reported good relationships with police, compared to 92% in Mississauga" say the academics. I'd guess a good bit of the Toronto friction has to do with the huge oversupply of Toronto cabs in tandem with the lack of cab stands. That must start a lot of the "harassment."

Chief of Police Bill Blair said it well when he said, "If council doesn't want these by-laws enforced, then we should be told. I have to take some issue with this data."

I find myself wondering if this report of the academics, as well as their first report, isn't simply an exercise in inductive reasoning. Their methods strike me as "junk science." They seem to believe everything they're told and make easy use of the most inflammatory material to provide what they say is a "rounded picture."

Amir Ebrahimi mentions we have no union. Apparently he'd like to go back to the feckless labour strife we had a few years ago. It got us nowhere and cost us a lot of anxiety as well as money. Unions are fine where they belong, but they don't belong in the taxi industry. Why? Because of the nature of the work we do. The taxi driver takes in money, pays out money, and lives on the difference. That's the nature of business, not employment. Taxi drivers are not employees.

I think Amir Ebrahimi would do better to start thinking of himself as a small businessman. He ought to ally himself with the same. He also ought to learn to speak courteously but not servilely to the police, who exist in every organized society on this earth. He ought to try not to park where it is not permitted. He ought to keep a log, as the City now requires, and a picture of himself - smiling, not glowering - should be posted in a prominent place in his cab. Then, I suspect, he'd have much less trouble with "racialization" by the Toronto Police. The "racialization" of the political-bureaucratic system of the City of Toronto he'd still have to suffer.

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In a recent letter to the editor, writer Bob Boyd demanded to know what Councillor Howard Moscoe's agenda is. Methinks Howie won't fully state same in public till after it's done. In Howie's ending, all Toronto's cabbies will buy their own taxicab and have their own taxi permit, which will be called a plate, and they will no longer be exploited by plate owners in "this rotten system." Just as an unintended consequence of all of this, the City of Toronto will up its annual money take from the drivers by perhaps 100 percent over 1998. After Howie's gone, of course, the rest of the pack will be in a position to go for more. They won't have promised us anything - and there will be no property rights to protect any of us. I say it again: The only way for the Toronto taxi driver to get a better livelihood is to neuter the politicians first. Their system is so in need of money it will take anything it can from almost anybody it can.

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At a recent meeting of the TTIA, I was pleased to hear an experienced driver tell that he had recently been asked to speak to a group of Ethiopian taxi drivers. That rang a bell with me, as I've long believed that some ethnic and/ or national groups are severely under-represented in taxi affairs. The Ethiopians, Eritreans, Somalis, and some others.

I wish someone would make a serious attempt to organize those drivers who work standard taxicab plates - lease-car drivers, fleet-car drivers, shift drivers of all kinds - and want to continue to do so. These are the drivers that the City will put out of business if it can. I'd cooperate with any such person or group as I am able. I'm at bigred@ontariointernet.com.

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For those of my readers awaiting the introduction of The McSherry Report: an Independent Report on the Plight of Toronto's Taxi Drivers and Their Purposeful Exploitation by the City of Toronto, before the City's Licensing and Standards Committee, it's now a case of Don't Hold Your Breath.

For the May meeting I was politely discouraged by Ben Rothman, Howard Moscoe's executive assistant, and I wasn't sorry because the process of writing the damned thing was very hard on me. For June, Howie left me a telephone message in which, in effect, he told me I was too rude and "the agenda is closed." He told me writing "Howard Moscoe must go!" across the front of the report is not a good way to get his cooperation. For July, I was too late (nine days beforehand is not enough time, even though I've seen one of Howie's puppies walk in and get added to the agenda 20 minutes before he spoke). And, too, I've already been told I can't get on in September because of three other disqualifying criteria e-mailed to me by the committee's secretary. I'll have to think of something.

Help Keep McSherry out of Seaton House. Get a copy of Mean Streets: Confessions of a Nighttime Taxi Driver. Available at Harry's Garage, 4 Buckingham Avenue, near Royal York and Evans, during business hours. See Glen. Or there's always bigred@ontariointernet.com.