Turtle or Scorpion?

In New York City bullet-resistant are being handed out to livery drivers.

Vests just motivate the shooter to aim higher, don't they? Just as partitions preclude any any active participation in survival for the driver, with partitions drivers are shot like fish in a barrel. For every action there is a reaction. Shooting through the side window is always easy, even from the rear seat. If, as a robber, I see a vest, I'll go for the 'head shot'. If as a robber I see a partition I'll shoot through it or around it. Wake up! If they shoot at you or your group, you or your group should be known for shooting back, successfully. It works in cities where cab drivers carry guns.

So-called ‘safety mandates’ are promoted by agencies which, by their own admission, don’t track results. If asked, Boston and New York City will deny having any statistics for murder rates, before or after any specific safety initiative such as ‘trouble lights’, lock boxes, partitions or ‘yield to the assailant’ directives.

The survivability of cab drivers is toyed with by taxi regulators, the results of the ‘toying’ are not even available for review.

Looking at partition performance, claims are made concerning robberies and assaults, which do decline. However, the radical increase in the number of assailants using guns instead of knives (when there are partition requirements) resulted in more slain cab drivers.

The anti second amendment politics of city regulation in Boston and New York City have been disastrous for cab drivers. In cities, like New Orleans, cab drivers are known to be possibly be armed. When the Times-Picayune newspaper ended their support for a partition mandate by only publishing stories where the driver prevailed in the face of an assailant shooting at him, the murder rate, in the deadliest city, in the deadliest occupation, went to zero for over ten years. That was from a high of 13 shot dead in 3 years, 1992-1997.

In 1984 the Commissioner of the Boston Police Department announced that cab drivers were, in fact, not prohibited from carrying guns while driving. The result was delightful. There were no incidents of any cab drivers improperly using their gun. There was a 1985 drop of 50% in assault and a 1986 33% drop in assault on cab drivers. It was then that the Boston Police Department Hackney Carriage Unit attributed those drops to a 14 year old partition mandate. They changed history. The partition mandate began in 1970, but they after 1987, started to say that the partition mandate began in 1984.

When Bridget Bane, Criminal Justice Commissioner for the City of New Orleans, asked Marc Cohen, of the Boston Police Department Hackney Carriage Unit, what year the mandate was phased in, he replied “1984”. When Ms. Bane said she was looking at a specification sheet put out by the Boston Police Department Hackney Carriage Unit, dated 1975. It was then that Mr. Cohen stated “No driver of a partitioned cab had been attacked by a rear seat occupant since the mandate started.”

There is no shortage of slain cab drivers since the Boston Police Department Hackney Carriage Units’ partition mandate was instituted.