Columnist Jeff German: Inaction on cameras abhorrent

Friday, March 4, 2005 | 5:12 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

WEEKEND EDITION

March 5 - 6, 2005

Sunny Kim says he understands the value of putting cameras in cabs.

Had there been one in his taxi Tuesday, there's a good chance he would not have been brutally attacked by a 17-year-old male passenger.

Kim, a 45-year-old Korean immigrant, spent most of the week at Sunrise Hospital recovering from nearly a dozen stab wounds he suffered in the attack. He has stitches in his neck, head and back.

"This could have happened to any driver," Kim says. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Kim, who was given the green light Friday to go home from the hospital, says the nightmarish assault won't deter him from returning to work when he's recovered.

"They're not going to stop me from doing my job," he says.

But the Yellow Cab driver adds he doesn't know when he'll be well enough to return.

"With all of my stitches, I look like Frankenstein right now," he says.

Kim, however, is thankful that Metro Police did their job.

His young assailant was arrested on robbery and attempted murder charges shortly after the incident.

Though they had no photo of the suspect, officers tracked the boy down through good old-fashioned police work after a witness provided them with a description of Kim's attacker. The youth was apprehended near the scene of the crime.

Taxicab conglomerate Yellow Checker Star is installing still digital cameras in its 700 taxis, but it had not yet put one in Kim's vehicle prior to the assault.

Kim's boss, Bill Shranko, director of operations for Yellow Checker Star, says he's just sick over the attack.

"This was a senseless, vicious crime," says Shranko, who expects cameras will be installed in all Yellow Checker Star cabs by April 1. "It's absolutely outrageous for a driver to be attacked like this."

It's also another reminder of the Taxicab Authority Board's failure to enact a regulation ensuring that every cab is equipped with still cameras. This is something Taxicab Authority Administrator Yvette Moore had asked the five-member board to approve more than a year ago.

So far Yellow Checker Star is the only company to put in still cameras.

Two other companies, Whittlesea Blue Cab and Desert Cab, are installing high-tech video cameras with sound. Those cameras, however, have drawn criticism from just about everybody, including civil libertarians and state lawmakers, because of their potential to invade the privacy of the drivers and their passengers.

The rest of the companies are doing nothing, and the Taxicab Authority Board is doing nothing to light a fire under them.

It's all bordering on negligence.

One lawmaker, Sen. Warren Hardy, R-Las Vegas, is furious with the board's lack of action.

"I find it outrageous that they continue to sit on their hands," Hardy says. "It's bureaucratic stonewalling. It's absolutely maddening."

After months of debate, the board passed a camera regulation in October. But an interim legislative committee chaired by Hardy rejected it in January over concerns it allowed cab companies to install cameras with sound that could be used more to spy on the drivers than to protect them.

Instead of fixing the regulation and making it clear that sound won't be allowed, the board ducked its responsibility and decided to seek guidance from the entire Legislature. Sheepish board members said they weren't sure they had authority to specifically ban cameras with sound.

Hardy, however, says his committee made it perfectly clear in January that the board had that authority.

"It was very obvious what the legislative direction was," he says.

So now the Legislature is being asked to do what the board should have done, and no one in Carson City is sure how to accomplish that task.

Both Hardy and Sen. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, who chairs the Transportation Committee, say they hope to get some kind of legislation passed that will mandate cameras in cabs without sound. But they say they haven't figured out their strategy, yet.

The Taxicab Authority Board, meanwhile, continues to take no iniative.

And drivers like Sunny Kim continue to put their lives on the line every time they step into a cab.