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Andraea Benson can’t ticket every dirty cab she sees. Sometimes, she can only yell at them. “Wash your car!” she shouts at a dusty taxi driving by as she’s ticketing another cab.
But the D.C. taxi inspector says she’s not “over the top” about her job.
“Some of them think, ‘Oh, you’re out here to get me,'” said Benson. “No, I’m not. I’m out here to do my eight hours and go home.”
Benson and her partner Kiesha Byrd pass out tickets to more than 15 cabs Wednesday — before lunch.
Hack inspectors have long borne the wrath of cab drivers who say their inspections are picky, expensive and don’t get to the heart of the problem in the District’s ailing taxi system, a tangle of rules and a market flooded with illegal drivers.
Benson and Byrd went up against some of those drivers Wednesday.
“This is harassment all the time!” said cabbie Anand Khanna as he waves paperwork in front of Benson’s window after receiving two tickets, one for a dirty cab and one for improper documentation. “You lied to the court and you have been for years.”
Benson explained that she’d already written the ticket. Khanna would have to wait for a hearing to air his side of the story.
Benson and Byrd say they’re just enforcing the rules.
“He said it’s harassment, us stopping him. But we’re hack inspectors,” Byrd said. “That’s our job.”
Cab drivers may be waging a war for reform and higher fares, claiming they don’t make enough money to live on, but that seems irrelevant as Benson and Byrd watch a cab crusted with dirt pull up right in front of their parked car Wednesday.
“Girl, they asking for it. I don’t know why they did that,” Benson tells Byrd.
She pauses to wax philosophical.
“Laziness costs you money. We’re all guilty of that.”
The District currently has 12 hack inspectors but only six cars for them to patrol, so they work in pairs. And no hack inspectors work on Sunday or past midnight, when many unlicensed and out-of-district taxis roam the streets.
The D.C. Council is now considering legislation to overhaul the city’s taxi system, requiring cabs to use GPS and accept credit cards, that would also strengthen enforcement by giving the D.C. Taxi Commission the ability to hire 29 inspectors and buy more cars.
“They’re needed,” Benson says. “We’ll do the job. You just got to make sure you give us the equipment.”
