Hookers need a ride, too!
City cabbies will now learn that it’s OK to pick up a prostitute — as a passenger, that is.
Taxi officials yesterday released an anti-sex-trafficking video — mandatory viewing for all cabbies — that explains when it is and is not OK to transport a working girl.
Picking up street walkers is fine, but driving helpless women around for pimps is not, the video explains.
“It is illegal to refuse a fare based upon a person’s appearance or gender,” reads the presentation, believed to be the first of its kind in the United States.
The nine-minute video was created after the City Council approved an anti-sex-trafficking bill, passed after a father and son were charged in April with using six livery drivers to deliver hookers to johns, some of whom enjoyed sex acts for $200 to $500 in the back seats of the vehicles.
But some prostitutes worried that the measure meant that cabbies would be too scared to pick them up, so the video clarifies it for them.
Even if drivers know their fares are hookers, they can’t turn them down.
“Suspecting or knowing that someone is a prostitute does not give you the right to refuse that person a ride,” the video says.
Laurel Eisner, Executive Director of Sanctuary for Families, a non-profit that helps sex trafficking victims, said the video had the right message.
“The TLC and the City Council should be commended for taking this vital issue so seriously and warning drivers about the repercussions of illegal sex-trafficking activity while assuring law-abiding drivers that their ordinary work, picking up fares, is not illegal,” she said.
TLC Commission David Yassky said “It’s important for our licenses to understand that sex trafficking is wrong and illegal and that they must not have anything whatsoever to do with it. Sex trafficking is not a victimless crime, and this training video will help ensure that our licensees understand their obligations under the law.”