Cabbie Chief Calls for CCTV
The head of one of Lancashire’s biggest taxi unions has called for security cameras to be fitted to all taxis if the recent epidemic of increasingly violent attacks is to stop.
Mr Charles Oakes, the chairman of the Bolton, Bury, Burnley, Preston Hackney Carriage Association today has said that the main way to help cab drivers avoid hostilities with the public is for CCTV cameras to be introduced as a mandatory feature in taxis.
He said in an interview with myself today that “If they [refering to the council’s of the region]want to do something about this positively, then get CCTV cameras in every vehicle that they licence and that will protect the public and protect the drivers a like.”
He added “These people have got to be prosecuted, as has taxi drivers if they step out of line. If they do do things with passengers then they’ve got to be prosecuted, but let’s not have this culture of ‘Oh well, I’ll just report this taxi driver for this and maybe he’ll loose this, maybe he’ll loose that and I may not have to pay’ because it doesn’t do anyone any good, it spends alot of time toing and froing and alot of expense in legal costs and nobodys ever the winner of them.”
The fitment of cameras has been been rejected though by councils because of the potentially high cost of installing such a system into cabs as Mr Oakes explains; The council, they will say if you get them, ‘We’ll do what we can for taxi drivers’, we’ve said quite clearly, ‘All right, put CCTV cameras in every vehicle, private hire and hackney’. They’ll say ‘Ooh, we can’t go to that expense’
Lancashire Constabulary also backed Mr Oakes’s idea, with press officer Andy Bradbury saying that “CCTV is the way forward” and described the regions taxi driver
s as “very vulnerable”. He also echoed the councils though stating that the mandatory supplement of a CCTV camera to every licensed car would be a “Massive funding issue”. Lancashire County Council was unavailable for comment.This comes after a report was publiced in the Lancashire Evening News on Thursday 4th of December that there have been over three hundred attacks of various sorts on cab drivers over the last twelve months.
When asked how many get reported to his organisation, Mr Oakes, taxi driver for over thirty years, said “It’s probably a daily occurrence, one way or another. These attacks in different severities are coming mainly every day now. It’s not just attacks, it’s verbal, it’s racial, it’s theft sometimes, personal attacks, it just goes through the entire spectrum”.
He was also keen to demonstrate that the industry and those in it are not getting much support, despite the huge amount of attacks saying “There’s little support off councils, I’ve got to say Preston council, there’s little support off them because their attitude is ‘well the public’s safety is must be our paramount consideration’. Well the taxi drivers are members of the public, they’re doing a job, they’re doing it on behalf of the town so they want paying for it and they don’t want abusing.”
He also stated the importance of drivers reporting abuse saying that people have to “make sure that they report incidents to the police so the police can get the resources to tackle what is becoming a very dangerous trend within the town centres.”
Mr Oakes though was at a loss though as to why recent figures of abuse are so high but commented that “It’s very difficult to say isn’t it? It’s how society is goin’ that there are people out there that’s hell bent on not just going out for an enjoyable night out but to cause trouble and I constantly walk in town and I look at the people coming out of pubs and clubs and the amount of aggression to everyone, not just taxi drivers, but to the police, to doormen is outrageous.”
He later added “They run the risk everytime they drive a taxi and pick up a passenger they run the risk of getting assualted, they run the risk of being reported for touching women up or rape, we’ve even had the drivers accused of male rape and it’s the idiotic situation we are in that people know how to get away with paying. We just want paying for the work we do, and if people don’t want to pay to get home, then walk.
Lancashire Constabulary have also said that taxi companies should also check out the addresses of a phone number they receive, making sure it is an address and not just a phone box in order to help protect their drivers.
Mr Oakes ruled out though any sort of strike-like action though saying “At the end of the day, we’re there to provide a service and it’s just a simple minority that spoil it for the rest of them, but our drivers are not there to be abused and it is already difficult to get people to work antisocial hours, which they are doing, and a lot of drivers won’t work nights because of the trouble surrounding the night shifts as well.”
Below is a map showning all of the cases of abuse towards taxi drivers reported in the Lancashire Evening News over the last month in the Preston area.
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