Curses

I’ll tell you what — if cab drivers quit being such assholes and accept credit cards, I’ll gladly look the other way if they want to curse at each other:

A New York City cab driver has been fined $1,000 for launching a foul-mouthed tirade at another cabbie. The confrontation occurred Oct. 8, 2007, on the West Side of Manhattan when neither driver had a passenger.

Driver Malik Rizwan honked at fellow cabbie Zbigniew Sobczak after Sobszak cut him off, prompting Sobszak to jump out of his cab and use a vulgarity repeatedly.

Rizwan called the police and accused Sobczak of assault. A city administrative law judge found Sobczak guilty of verbal harassment, not assault, and recommended a $350 fine.

But Taxi and Limousine Commission Chairman Matthew Daus, in a ruling last Friday, increased the penalty to $1,000 and a 30-day suspension.

There was a time when cab drivers were given more leeway with language.

A 1982 legal decision in a case called TLC vs. Baudin found that a “driver’s use of profanity during a fight with a pedestrian was not misconduct given cognizance to the realities of life in New York City.” But Daus, in a letter to Sobczak, said, “To the extent that decisions issued before my tenure, such as TLC vs. Baudin, may be read to overrule the penalty of license revocation for verbal harassment or abuse, I would override those decisions.” “The city has changed over the years,” Daus said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s become more civil. … The days when drivers can curse at each other are over in my opinion.”

Then again, not all agencies agree:

Using profanity may be unprofessional for cabdrivers or newscasters, but cops are often free to shoot their mouths off, city officials said.

In fact, a well-placed F-bomb can be part of good police work, and may even help prevent the use of deadly force, said Andrew Case, spokesman for the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

. . .

The NYPD patrol guide calls on cops to be “courteous and respectful,” but does not explicitly forbid profane language.

Of the 4,024 complaints lodged against officers for “discourteous” (as opposed to offensive or bigoted) language in 2007, only 6.6 percent were substantiated.

And in 7.6 percent of cases, choosing to swear and protect was not only acceptable, but actually warranted, Case said.

The rest of the complaints were either unfounded or impossible to prove.

“If [cops] have used ordinary language and a person continues to do what was improper, [the officers] are allowed to raise the tone of the exchange,” Case said. “It is called using verbal force.”