WEDGIE: Cabby Ranjit Singh of Corona, Queens, got a rude awakening yesterday when he found the rear end of his taxi resting on the windshield of a Honda Civic. Police were looking for the car’s driver. (Ellis Kaplan)
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New York’s streets have grown meaner for city cabbies.
Robberies of medallion and livery drivers have soared 37.5 percent since 2007, with four straight years of increases, according to figures released to The Post by the NYPD.
The incidents jumped 6.2 percent in 2010 alone, to 422, the statistics reveal.
Cab-related murders also have recently increased, after a lull in 2007 and 2008 when no homicides were reported, the figures show. The violence has prompted dozens of drivers to start wearing bulletproof vests.
There were three cab-related homicides in 2010. A year earlier, there were four slayings, including three livery drivers shot dead in their vehicles during a two-week period that August.
Among last year’s fatalities was Bronx livery driver Cesar Santos, 48. He was gunned down in June after chasing two thugs who refused to pay their fare. Hosny Calderon-Hernandez, 19, has been charged with Santos’ murder.
The homicide numbers do not distinguish between crimes against taxi drivers and passengers, the NYPD said.
Still, cab-related felony assaults dropped significantly in 2010, to six from 13 the year before. In 2008, nine felony assault incidents were recorded; in 2007, there were 17.
One of last year’s most bizarre attacks occurred Aug. 24, when an attacker identified as film student Michael Enright, 22, got into a yellow cab and reached through its partition with a folding knife to slash driver Ahmed Sharif, 43, across his neck, face and arms.
Enright, who had been embedded with the Marines in Afghanistan, allegedly went after Sharif, a Bangladesh native, after the cabby said he was Muslim.
Sharif, a married dad who lives in Queens, was briefly hospitalized. Enright has been charged with attempted murder as a hate crime.
In another heinous 2010 incident, mohawked punk Shawn Peace shot cabby Trevor Bell six times during a botched robbery Dec. 3, according to cops.
Video recorded from inside the livery allegedly showed Peace, 23, sitting in the rear of the cab before he turned and demanded money from Bell. Bell was shot in the neck and legs in a struggle but miraculously survived. Peace is being held at Rikers Island on $1.8 million bail.
The increases in robbery and murder come as the NYPD continues to report a decline in overall citywide crimes.
Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said most of the figures represent crimes against the livery industry — and said that in some categories, the crime numbers might be even higher than NYPD figures reflect. He has previously said drivers face 300 assaults and robberies a month.
“We know for a fact that lots of crimes against drivers go unreported,” Mateo told The Post. “We believe that although crime [overall] is significantly lower and that the NYPD has made a dent in cracking most cases against drivers, their numbers are not accurate.”
For example, he said, the crime stats likely do not reflect the high incidence of petty theft, which includes passengers stiffing drivers out of fares.
“We have a few hundred of these cases every week, where people simply take a cab, get out and run, leaving the driver with no fare,” he said.
Still, Mateo’s group gives the NYPD high marks for its efforts fighting cab crime.
“Murders, assaults and robberies have dropped more than 90 percent since the 1990-2000 [decade],” he said, adding that his group “gives the NYPD a
‘B-plus” ‘ in its efforts.