Ahh the taxi industry. Truly one of the more fucked sectors of this fine brown land of ours.
Whether its the dodgy cab monopoly or the quasi-legal, under-paying Ubers, there’s never a dull moment in the taxi world, and at least this story falls onto the more victorious side, with Melbourne cabs hit with a police sting over refusing short fares at the city’s main airport.
As anyone who’s flown into or out of Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport knows, getting to/from the CBD is generally a clusterfuck, but for more nearby citizens, trying to get a cab to neighbouring suburbs can be a unique slice of hell.
After bucketloads of complaints, plain-clothes police officers carried out a sting over the weekend, fining dozens of dodgy cabbies for the illegal practice of refusing a fare at a rank.
In what will come to no one’s shock, some of the taxi drivers didn’t take too well to it, either. As told by an officer to The Age:
It is absolutely illegal. They cannot knock you back. It’s known as refusing a taxi fare on rank. It’s a $396 fine on the spot.
One of the cabbies refused a fare to one of my workmates. [The officer] identified what we were doing and he completely flipped. He punched his steering wheel and swore in front of kids so we gave him another fine.
Ha, sucked in idiot.
Locals are absolutely frothing at the news of sweet, sweet justice, with this post from Hume Police Service, going off tits on FB:
Huge round of applause to this legend btw:
The coppers say they’ll be back to do more stings.
