Offended cabbies are providing a money reward for information a couple of “faucet and snatch” crew that’s ripped off 22 drivers in 22 precincts during the last eight weeks in against the law spree the union spokesman referred to as “extraordinary.”
Fernando Mateo of New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers stated the NYPD ought to have advised cabbies concerning the spree — which regularly depends on crooks seizing the motive force’s telephone and wiring money by apps like Zelle or Venmo.
Different occasions, they’ll ask to see the motive force’s telephone to allow them to kind an handle or change their vacation spot — after which they run, in accordance with the NYPD.
“Cell telephones at present are the equal of money, and criminals on the market know this,” Mateo stated. “In order that they’re not placing a gun to your head and saying, ‘Give me your money’. As an alternative, they’re saying, ‘Give me your telephone.’
“Then they both Zelle, Venmo or do no matter they should do to take all of the money you will have,” he stated. “It’s not $100 you will have in your pocket, now it’s 1000’s of {dollars}.”
One unlucky sufferer misplaced $7,000 to the crew, whose members both hail a cab or simply bounce within the backseat when the motive force slows down, he stated.
“Most of them are both armed with a knife, or they faux to be armed,” Mateo stated. “If the motive force is dealing with ahead and if any individual places one thing right here to his neck, he doesn’t know if it’s a toothpick or a knife.”
Mateo additionally pilloried the NYPD for not telling cabbies concerning the crimes earlier.
“This can be a sample we must always have been suggested about in early January, after the third or fourth theft of cell telephones,” he stated.
“But when the NYPD doesn’t inform us something, there’s no method for us to speak to our 30,000 drivers which are on the market hustling each day and being robbed each day,” he continued. “We demand … the NYPD lets us know when patterns come up in order that we will cease [them] from going ahead.”
The division is investigating the crimes, he stated. And the union is providing $2,000 to anybody who can inform officers who’s behind the crimes.
“They’re very sensible … as a result of they’ve hit 22 occasions in 22 totally different precincts,” Mateo stated. “They don’t do it in the identical neighborhood.”
“There are 200,000 taxi drivers in New York Metropolis in order that they have 200,000 potential targets that they’ll goal at any given second.”
Mateo additionally slammed bail reform, and stated authorities ought to get “tougher, stronger, extra demanding on crimes and defend the victims which are struggling.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s black, Chinese language, Spanish, white, no matter,” he stated. “Should you commit against the law, you must get locked up.”
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