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.
But the bill expressly prohibits discrimination, said Kathleen Slocum, senior staff attorney for Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit serving sex trafficking victims and their children.
“The language of the bill makes it abundantly clear that this is a civil penalty that is added on to those that are already prosecuted under existing New York state law,” said Slocum. “So you would first have to be convicted … of engaging in sex trafficking, which any DA [District Attorney] would tell you is very, very difficult to do.”
Educating drivers about sex trafficking laws, and services available for victims is included in the bill, as well as specific language forbidding discrimination based on appearance.
Council member Daniel Dromm was originally one of those against the bill but now supports it after the language was changed.
“The legislation was fixed so that it has to be that it’s proven that the taxi driver knew he was transporting a woman from place to place to place for the purposes of sex trafficking,” Dromm told The Epoch Times last week.
Mayor Bloomberg said he would mull the bill over and make a decision by Friday. However, “if I were to veto this bill, it’s going to get overridden instantly by the City Council,” he said. “So it’s more symbolic, and I just want to satisfy myself that I’ve done as much due diligence that I should have.”
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