NEW YORK—Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed five bills into law Wednesday, but chose not to sign a bill that would add penalties for taxi drivers engaged in sex trafficking.
Drivers and vehicle owners who knowingly let a vehicle be used as transportation for sex workers, would, under the legislation, get slapped with a $10,000 fine.
Taxi drivers would be at risk of losing their livelihood and going to jail “for something they do not know they’re committing,” said Fernando Mateo, president of New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, Wednesday at City Hall. “And NYPD will have a squadron of women posing as prostitutes and stopping these guys, and as soon as they put them in the car, they’re busted.”
After Mateo and several taxi drivers railed against the proposed bill, the mayor said previously he had questions about the bill but felt they had been satisfied.
Yet “When you were talking and everybody else was talking, quite honestly I’m not so sure that I remember why I was satisfied the last time,” Bloomberg said, adding if his daughters came out of a club late at night dressed risqué he didn’t “understand how a taxi driver can make a decision.”
Mateo and other opponents of the bill argue it could provoke discrimination against women, particularly those out late at night, as taxi drivers would refuse passengers they think might be sex workers, fearing the $10,000 fine.
