The New York Taxi & Limousine
Commission (TLC) seems to be set on demonstrating the old saw that
no good deed goes unpunished.
On Monday, TLC officers impounded the car of 25-year-old Yeshaya
Liebowitz and issued him a $2,000 citation, the Daily News
reports. His crime:
offering free rides to cancer patients as part of his work with
the Jewish charity Chesed.
“I tried to explain to him we’re not a car service,” Yeshaya
Liebowitz, 25, said of the Monday misadventure in Borough Park,
Brooklyn.
The TLC officer wasn’t interested and instead made off with the
car, leaving the two sick, elderly passengers stranded on the side
of the road and Liebowitz holding the hefty citation.
The New York Daily News
has been reporting on a recent push by the Taxi & Limousine
Commission to crackdown on gypsy cabs—unlicensed drivers who pick
up passenger or help out neighbors, friends, or relatives when they
need a life in exchange for some cash.
Gypsy cabs, of course, are the original
ridesharing technology. Lyft without the pink mustache, Uber
without the app. Ridesharing makes taxi commissions
awfully nervous. And when powerful monopolists get nervous,
they tend to get mean.
This incident has a “happy” ending. A local politician
intervened and the summons was dismissed. But those charity workers
had better be careful. Challenging urban taxi commissions can be a
dangerous move, just ask Reason‘s own Jim Epstein who
was
arrested for trying to film a meeting of the D.C. Taxi
Commission.
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