In a message dated 8/9/2003 4:49:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Peter T Schmitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> the president of the cabdrivers association asked city leaders to subsidize > surveillance cameras for taxi cabs. Mayor Rybak evidently responded that public > money wouldn't be provided for private businesses.< What he said was that it would be unreasonable, and he's right. Shall the city buy video equipment for all stores, since sometimes stores get robbed and employees are shot? Then the city can buy video surveillance equipment for banks, since they get robbed. And let's not forget that we have folks shot in private homes, so let's have the city buy a system for all dwellings. What the city could do is require that any cab or livery that makes pickups within Minneapolis have a specified security system. This won't help any cabbie in a cab licensed in another town, though--a cabbie who picks up a fare in Richfield and drops them across the street in Minneapolis wouldn't have to have a Mpls license. And a lot of the cabs you see on Minneapolis streets are actually licensed in the 'burbs. The state could pass a law applying to all cabs within the state, but I can see Moorhead cab owners objecting to the cost when their cabbies aren't at risk. All that being said, I've ridden in some cabs here, and the security is such that I wouldn't consider driving a cab for any amount of money. I witnessed an attempted armed robbery of a Somali cab driver in Eagan, in broad daylight on a weekday afternoon. I was sitting on the balcony of a friend's condo in a good neighboorhood and saw a cab pull into the parking lot of the building across the street. About a minute later the cabbie jumped out of the cab and ran toward the building, holding up a cell phone and yelling, "Get out of my cab!" Two young black men slowly got out, watching him, and ran off between two buildings. The cabbie saw me, came over and handed his phone so I could tell his dispatcher where the cab was (the cabbie was a bit excited and wasn't speaking clearly). The dispatcher called police, who arrived, talked to me about what I saw, then called a Bloomington unit which had a tracking dog. I found out two days later that they did track the two robbers to a housing complex about a mile away, and caught them. Apparently they had pulled something similar a day before. --M.G. Stinnett Jordan TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
