Privacy Concerns — Quaint Like A Checker Cab

In a time when security cameras and EZPass technology — not to mention whatever they’re planning with congestion pricing — are so ubiquitous arguing that GPS technology somehow invades your privacy seems like a stretch:

Taxi drivers on a collision course with the city over new tracking technology and credit card payment systems may play the strike card today.

The Taxi Alliance is widely expected to warn that medallion cabbies will walk off the job Sept. 1 if the Taxi and Limousine Commission holds to its plan to install the new gear in their hacks.

The 8,400-member Alliance has been moving toward a strike declaration for months.

“If the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg continue to stay silent as drivers’ privacy and economics are trampled on, we will strike,” Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said yesterday.

The TLC said the Global Positioning System tracking devices are meant to be used only to help cabbies get around the city, reunite passengers with lost belongings and perhaps catch criminals who prey on cabbies.

But drivers say the system will invade their privacy, create a new breed of backseat drivers who disagree with GPS directions and cost them money.

Striking over technological changes that actually encourage consumers to use their service more — nice bargaining tactic. Even the TWU didn’t have such a bad public relations position to begin from (it’s about health care for all Americans!) and look where they got.

This War Is Going To Take Many Turns . . . And The Enemy Must Be Defeated On Every Battlefield

Those who block the box are indeed vile scum but is it really possible just to change the infraction from a “moving” to a “nonmoving” violation (they’re still moving, right?)? Or maybe no one cares* . . . this, as Hizzoner’s War on Congestion rolls along unimpeded:

Ticketing drivers who block intersections would become much easier under a plan announced yesterday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as part of a broader attack on traffic congestion.

At the same time, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city is adding 117 enforcement agents to direct traffic at busy intersections throughout the city.

Under the proposal to deter drivers from blocking an intersection, the infraction, now a moving violation, would be reclassified as a nonmoving violation to simplify issuing tickets, the mayor said. The change, which requires Albany approval, would allow traffic enforcement agents to issue tickets to be mailed later by entering a license plate number into a handheld device. Currently, only police officers and a small number of enforcement agents can issue summonses, which must be given out at the scene.

The new system would reduce the severity of the offense, which now carries a $90 fine and two points on a driver’s license. Under the new proposal, a driver would not incur points but would face a fine of $115. Authorizing all agents (there are currently 2,800) to issue tickets would sharply increase enforcement, officials said.

“One of the major causes of gridlock occurs when drivers decide to cross an intersection even though there is no room for them on the other side,” the mayor said at a Times Square news conference. With the changes, he added, “we’ll be able to increase the number of tickets we issue, which will ultimately discourage more people from breaking the law.”

*Q: Is that legal? A: Do I care?

Sergeant You Glad Neither Side Can Agree On A Contract?

The idea that an arbitration panel is to blame for what seems more and more like the worst contract ever* seems hard to believe:

With city cops among the worst-paid police in the nation, NYPD officers are increasingly turning down promotions to sergeant — because the pay raise isn’t big enough.

Under the contract imposed by a state arbitration panel in 2005, rookie cops are paid $25,100 a year while in the academy. Their maximum base pay tops out at $59,588 after seven years.

Cops promoted to the rank of sergeant earn just $61,093 — not even $2,000 a year more to compensate them for the increased responsibilities.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said yesterday the pay scale has had “significant ramifications.”

“What’s happened is all the raises have been compacted. They’ve been stretched out. So the desirability . . . of moving ahead in the ranks has been, I think, impacted,” Kelly said.

Of the 20,867 officers eligible to take the Feb. 3 sergeant exam, only 3,856 sat for the test — and just 255 passed.

By comparison, 7,154 of 22,927 eligible officers took the test in December 2003, the last time it was offered before the current police contract was imposed. From that pool, 1,729 became sergeants.

. . .

A cop who recently passed the sergeant exam said he considered not taking the test because of the poor pay. “It’s like, what’s the point?” he said.

The reluctance of many cops to seek a promotion comes as officers are leaving the NYPD in large numbers for other departments that pay more.

And the best news:

City Hall and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association are battling over a new contract. But the talks broke down repeatedly, and the negotiations are now in arbitration.

*See also, for example.

Good Cop/Bad Cop

What if instead of engaging in tragedy carpetbagging Al Sharpton held press conferences decrying douchebag cops who take advantage of their position in order to flood vulnerable communities with pounds and pounds of cocaine? I know, I know — not pathetic enough:

A crooked cop pleaded guilty yesterday to chauffeuring his bad-news brother on cocaine deliveries and picking up dirty cash for a Bronx drug ring — all while brazenly toting his NYPD-issued gun along for protection.

Disgraced former Manhattan Transit Officer José Torrado, 31, admitted in Manhattan federal court that he drove his brother, Edwin, on drug deliveries and picked up the drug money between 2002 and 2005.

He quietly hammered out a plea deal with prosecutors last month.

Torrado’s role in the illicit operation surfaced after his brother and four other ring members were busted in September 2005, when authorities seized 135 kilograms of cocaine — worth about $4 million on the street — that had been stashed behind a false wall of a truck in The Bronx.

Torrado was a transit cop for five years before he was forced out last November.

If Offered, I Won’t Take The Money I Didn’t Ask For

Councilmember Tony Avella won’t take the pay raise the Council voted itself. Something about “principle”:

After denouncing a recent pay hike for his colleagues, Queens Councilman Tony Avella said yesterday he won’t accept the $22,500 raise to his current $90,000 salary.

“For me this was a matter of principle, and I believe in putting my money where I put my mouth,” he said.

But he admits, “My wife isn’t too happy.

Previously, the maverick Democrat had said he was considering accepting the raise but donating the money to charity. Had he done that, he could have boosted his tax deduction for charitable contributions and also hiked the eventual value of his pension, which is pegged on gross earnings.

I don’t get it — what’s the point of grandstanding then?