TheAgitator.com
Offer a Ride, Lose Your Car
Monday, May 19th, 2008Whenever I’m visiting a new city, I always try to chat with the cab drivers about how taxis and limo services are regulated. For reasons I can’t quite figure out, it seems to be one of the most heavily regulated industries in most cities. The cabbie I talked to in Chicago this weekend went on for a good 20 minutes. A medallion to drive a taxi in Chicago costs about $150,000. My cabbie said inspectors are all over the city, and something as small as a nick on your bumper can cost you 2-3 days of driving. Of course, as I’ve found to be the case in many cities, he also said a couple hundred bucks placed on the passenger seat will help you pass inspection every time.
In any case, this is just a long introduction to this outrageous story out of Florida:
A man who said he thought he was just helping a woman in need is accused of running an illegal taxi service.
Miami-Dade County’s Consumer Services Department has slapped Rosco O’Neil with $2,000 worth of fines, but O’Neil claims he is falsely accused.
“I ain’t running nothing illegal,” O’Neil said.
The 78-year-old said he was walking into a Winn-Dixie to get some groceries when he was approached by a woman who said she needed a ride.
“She asked me, ‘Do I do a service?’” O’Neil said. “I told her no. She said, ‘I need help getting home.’”
O’Neil told the woman if she was still there when he finished his shopping, he would give her a ride. She was, so he did.
As it turned out, the woman was an undercover employee with the consumer services department targeting people providing illegal taxi services.
“She said the reason she targeted him (is because) she saw him sitting in his car for a few minutes,” said Ellen Novodeletsky, O’Neil’s attorney.
After O’Neil dropped off the woman, police surrounded him, issued him two citations and impounded his minivan. On top of the fees, it cost O’Neil an additional $400 to retrieve his minivan from the impound lot.
There are no prior complaints that O’Neil was providing illegal transportation for a fee.
“It’s not entrapment because she didn’t expect him to provide her transportation,” said Sonya Perez, a spokeswoman for the consumer services department.
O’Neil claims he was just being kind and providing a ride to a lady in need.
“There’s all kinds of possibilities, but the fact of this particular case, what our enforcement officers witnessed — because we had several on the scene, plus a Miami-Dade police officer — and all the information came back the same, that this was a business transaction,” Perez said.
O’Neil said he never even discussed money until the woman insisted upon it.
“She asked me, ‘How much you charging?’” O’Neil said. “I said, ‘Anything you give me.’ She said, ‘No, I need a price.’”
Have to protect the state-enforced cartel, you know.
Police are not our friends. They are increasingly agents of a overbearing nanny state.
From Click it or Ticket (actively targeting people who don’t wear their seatbelt) to this. It proves that cops are not there to protect you or as their motto of “To Protect and Serve”. They are there to actively look for reasons to harass and cite you for trivial things.
It’s very clever, though. I especially like the way they con the victim/defendant into showing up at the arrest scene.
More seriously, if this was like most undercover schemes, it ought to be recorded. Of course, the likelihood of the recorder working drops the more correct the victim/defendant’s version of events is.
There’s a saying used by WoW forum trolls: Screenshot or it didn’t happen. When do we get to the point, especially in planned out police operations, where this burden of proof is used for the police case?
Maybe it’s just skeptical people here, but I think there have been enough incidences of police and prosecution witnesses lying about what they ‘know’ that it certainly wouldn’t be bad to be at that burden of proof for the state’s case in things like this. Show me the recording, from first contact to execution of the ‘crime’. And if you don’t have verifiable evidence of that WHOLE chain, your case loses credibility. If the camera gets turned off by you, and then turned back on later, I’m going to assume that what happened in the interim is BAD news for you, and you’re willfully hiding evidence from me.
Now, of course, me personally saying this is worthless, because I’ll never be on a jury. But how do we get more people, hopefully EVERYONE, to embrace this idea?
The cops want us to be under surveillance as much as possible? Then put the burden of using it correctly on them.
Playing devils advocate for a moment….so what if he was offering a ride in his personal vehicle for a fee? The idea that a citizen cant offer a ride to someone for a small fee is disturbing. Heck, a buddy of mine offered me a few dollars to take him to the mechanic to pick up his car when it was ready. Should i be branded as a criminal for this? Should the state be permitted to disallow my giving a ride to someone if i accept gas money for doing so? Screw that.
Wait a sec. Did you actually think there was an activity that you could just, like, do without even getting government authorization first?
So, do they publish your picture in the paper along with all the other people caught in the act of helping someone? Are the penalties equally harsh for the rider as they are for the driver. After all, like prostitution, there are always at least two parties to a business transaction. People who need help shouldn’t get off scott free while the driver takes the whole rap. They should be fined and their pictures should be in the paper, too. It’s those people walking around in need of help who are creating the market that ultimately leads weak-will people to break down and give in to the primal urge to render help.
well said, Claude!
I don’t see this as police abuse, I see it as rent coercion. these laws aren’t created to ‘keep us down’, they’re to protect someone’s financial interests.
If we can figure out a way to roll back the stupid laws, the police abuse gets drastically reduced. I don’t think any of these cops become cops to abuse us- they’re just enforcing stupid rules.
Never fear, citizens, the government is here to insure that no good deed goes unpunished!
What really amazes me about this is that they bothered to have an elaborate sting for this.
This must be entrapment. I usually think that just about any sting sort of operation should be considered entrapment, but this really cannot be anything else.
Even thought I’m a stauch 2nd-Amendment supporter, If I was in this sitation, I’d be glad that my state doesn’t allow concealed-carry, because the urge to use deadly force against the
policethugsimpoundingstealing my van would be overwhelming.So this just in…Car pooling is now effectively illegal.
We continue towards the desired goal of having everything be technically illegal, and everyone guilty of a crime. Big brother may ‘let’ you get away with your crime as long as it suits them, but if you ever step out of line, they will simply decide to enforce the ‘law’.
Why is it illegal to receive money for a ride? I guess if I were a cop I’d try to figure out how far he drove and divide it by his MPGs to get a number and then compare that to the “fee” he was paid. If equal or less, then the man didn’t even make a profit, and I’m not even considering wear and tear items like tires, breaks, and mileage on the engine.
BTW, when I was in HS and College, we never gave a ride without getting gas money. It’s just the way it was.
I saw a bumper sticker in Maui last week that summed it up nicely: “Gas, Ass, or Grass. Nobody rides for free.”
There was a thread on Fark about this case a week or two ago. One poster brought up that this could have been an illegal cab (I forget what the slang term is) and somewhat legit of a “bust”. Apparently there are illegal cabs that run under the radar in many neighborhoods that don’t have meters and would say charge a bulk fee to give a ride home from the grocery store.
Whole thing reminds me of prostitution somewhat. You can ride for free as it were (consensual sex) or a free car ride from a buddy but Uncle Sam help you if you pay cash money for said ride thats not government approved (marriage or legal prostitution in Nevada).
tom,
police have always followed the motto…
‘to protect and serve the state’
they just always seem to leave that last part out when they plaster it all over their cruisers.
Zeb,
Technically, sadly, this is not entrapment. Entrapment is a very high standard. It’s something along the lines of “inducing a person into committing a crime where they were otherwise not predisposed to committing it.” So merely providing someone with an opportunity, or even initiating the criminal act is not enough – think of drug buys or prostitution stings.
In this case it seems like entrapment because of the factual disagreement between the suspect and the cops (i.e. whether he asked for money or not). But that’s not the difference between entrapment and not entrapment, it’s the difference between straight up guilt and innocence in this case.
In general entrapment has to be when the police’s conduct in inducing the crime essentially undermines or negates the criminal intent.
Having said all that, this whole story is total BS!
Sonya Perez, another stupid bureaucrat.
Every definition of entrapment I’ve ever heard didn’t include the expectation of compliance with the request to break the law. Are they insinuating that it’s only entrapment if they force you to break the law?
Wow. Makes me glad I’ve always turned down money when giving a lift to someone in need. I never thought I’d be ruining someone’s day by not taking their money, but it seems they might have missed out on a bust.
Nick,
The limited information given in this article fits your definition of entrapment. Drug dealing and prostitution are ongoing criminal enterprises. The police initiating an interaction in those cases are legitimate. The article did not show that the authorities had any knowledge that this man was engaging in a taxi service (e.g. he had previously picked someone up and had returned to find a new fair).
They did indeed induce him to commit a crime by requesting him to set a price on his service. He didn’t request any amount, they asked him to specify an amount. The average person can not be reasonably expected to know or even believe this act to be illegal.
You may indeed be correct in that the courts will decide this is not entrapment, but they are only splitting hairs to collude with the authorities in supporting a bad charge.
AS,
You make a fair point. If the difference between committing the crime and not committing the crime is the naming of a set price then there would be a very good argument for entrapment.
However, it is not enough to satisfy entrapment for the police to go up to someone and say “will you give me a ride and then I will give you money?” Similarly it would not be entrapment for the police to go up to someone and say “I have a great plan to rob a bank, will you assist me?” or some other such analogy.
Ongoing criminal enterprise has little to do with entrapment, other than to demonstrate rather clearly the accused was predisposed to committing the crime. As I said, intent is the main issue.
This brings a quote from Fred Reed to mind:
“We may find that laws that made sense when they weren’t enforced very well become a smothering blanket when backed up by mindless software with police powers. A nation with no slop in the legal gears will be, I suspect, a nation of robots.”
Add mindless putative humans to that.
Nick,
My point about your examples was that they were so disparate from the situation related in the article that they were not useful at illustrating why this situation is not entrapment.
Crap like this is the reason why Good Samaritans no longer exist. No way to tell if the person is need is merely an undercover looking for a bust, and you’re the patsy.