Gatineau - Gatineau police are cracking down on fake taxi drivers and taxis going where they're not supposed to be. Over the last two weekends, 26 drivers were charged including one who was drunk.
The focus of this crackdown was Gatineau's bar area; late nights and closing time when folks want to get home and they're not paying attention to who is taking them there.
On a rainy Wednesday like this, cab drivers are likely to be busy picking up passengers. Ride share companies, too. They are easy to spot or readily identify themselves.
But when darkness falls along the bar strip in Gatineau, and people's level of intoxication rises, who is picking you and why sometimes becomes a little fuzzy.
“We are worried some people using these services could be the victim of a criminal infraction,” says Gatineau Police Constable Andrée East, “sexual assault or assault.”
So Gatineau Police conducted a sting over the last two weekends around restaurants and bars between 10:30 p.m. to 4 a.m. What they got surprised them.
Police laid a total of 26 fines in all. 14 drivers face a $2500 plus administrative fees for providing a taxi transport without an appropriate driver’s licence and a taxi driver’s licence. Three Quebec taxi drivers and nine Ottawa-area taxi drivers received a statement of offence ranging between $125 and $375 for taking fares where they're not allowed to go. Many of the fake or illegal drivers they caught were in rental cars.
Police are focusing on this issue mainly out of concern for vulnerable people leaving bars at night and getting into illegal cabs. In fact, one of the drivers they arrested during the crackdown was actually drunk.
There are risks, police say, with randomly flagging a car or not checking credentials. In fact, in Ottawa, a fake UBER driver was charged last year with sexually assaulting 3 women over the course of a month. Gatineau Police believe that's happened here, too.
“We don't have any complaint at this point,” says East, “but we have good reason to believe criminal infractions have been committed in those illegal taxis.”
For those in the legal taxi business, they hope these crackdowns will be a common occurrence.
Ghassan Mouaikel is the Director of Operations with Régal Taxi, “If you start doing (these crackdowns) every 2 months, these guys won't come back, especially with this high fine, they'll think twice before they come back.”
Gatineau Police are encouraging anyone who has been victimized by one of these illegal operations to call them to meet with an officer.
