Councilmember Tommy Wells wants the Office of Human Rights to look into both alleged racial discrimination perpetrated by taxi drivers and the Cab Commission’s handling of these complaints.
In a letter to Mónica Palacio, the acting director of OHR, the Ward 6 Councilmember cites WUSA9’s ongoing reports on how some drivers “disproportionately” pass by black people.
The most recent report, filed this past Thursday, reiterates this outrage, documenting 33 percent of cabs passed by black passengers, while zero passed by white passengers.
The DC Taxicab Commission (DCTC) Chairman Ron Linton claimed this is not the result of racism, but “economics.” This response causes me grave concern: The DCTC’s role is to ensure that drivers follow the law, not the least of which is the Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in public conveyances.
Linton told WUSA9 “it’s really not the racial thing that results in failure to haul. Most of it’s economic.” After Wells called for Linton to resign, the chairman sent a statement to the TV news outlet: “My recent comment in a television interview citing economics as a reason for failure to haul was simply incorrect. The DC Taxicab Commission places the highest priority on eradicating this violation. The only explanation for not picking up a passenger is if a taxi driver fears harm which is an extremely high standard to meet.”
Now Wells — who has called for DCTC to be abolished — wants OHR to investigate how DCTC handles failure to haul complaints, review DCTC’s policies on Human Rights training, and provide the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety (which he chairs) with a summary of complaints on this topic.
A Teamsters-Taxi association created in the face of modernization regulations criticized DCTC and Linton for not allowing a driver who did not have copies of his testimony to speak at a public meeting. As Commission member Paul Cohn put it, “The reason we are asking for written testimony is because a lot of our cab drivers have difficulty with our language. It’s very difficult for us to understand some of the people that testify.”
Read Wells’ letter below.
