Columnist Jeff German: Cabdriver steps up for comrades

Wednesday, March 23, 2005 | 11:24 a.m.

Greg Bambic is a soft-spoken guy who likes working behind the scenes helping his fellow cabbies.

Amid a wave of violent crimes against drivers in recent months, the 61-year old Bambic has been involved in raising money for some of the victims and their families.

For a long time the media-shy Bambic has kept his opinion to himself about the merits of putting cameras in cabs to deter violent crime. He has preferred not to rock the boat.

But, like many within the taxicab industry, the 12-year veteran driver has begun to vent his frustration -- as the crimes keep occurring and the companies keep fighting efforts to install the cameras.

Last week Bambic began to raise his profile in the debate. He organized a news conference with some of the victims in the hopes of lighting a fire under the companies and their indecisive regulators.

Then on Tuesday, for the first time ever, he made an impassioned plea for cameras before the state Taxicab Authority Board.

Bambic only needed to cite a few "dreadful statistics" to make his case.

The Taxicab Authority's own records, Bambic said, show that 17 drivers have been murdered since 1971, when the state agency started keeping crime statistics. Only four of those slayings have been solved.

Bambic went on to say that more than 50 percent of the 1,687 reported robberies against cabbies during this same period also have gone unsolved.

At the end of his remarks, Bambic suggested that it was time for the board to do the job it has neglected to do for months.

"When are you going to put cameras in these cabs to protect me and all of the cab drivers in Las Vegas?" he asked.

The board couldn't give Bambic an answer.

It decided to "stay the course," which means continue to do nothing, while it waits for a written opinion from the Legislative Counsel Bureau on what it should do to fix a faulty camera regulation.

The regulation, passed in October, ordered companies to install, at the very least, digital still cameras in their vehicles.

But in January an interim legislative committee rejected the regulation because it also gave the companies the ability to put in video cameras with sound that have potential to intrude on the privacy of drivers and passengers.

The legislative committee promised that the LCB opinion outlining the panel's concerns would be forthcoming but, as of Tuesday, it still hadn't been written.

But it's not as if the opinion is going to be a surprise to the board.

Earlier this month Sen. Warren Hardy, R-Las Vegas, who chaired the interim committee, said the panel made it very clear that it wanted the board to ban the use of cameras with sound. Hardy was outraged that the board refused to carry out the committee's wishes.

The board's tentativeness has allowed the industry to deal with the critical camera issue on its own -- with no continuity.

Whittlesea Blue Cab, one of the industry's leaders, has been installing cameras with sound. The Yellow Checker Star conglomerate has been putting in digital still cameras. Together, these two represent 42 percent of the industry. The rest of the companies have been doing absolutely nothing.

The void left by the Taxicab Authority Board, meanwhile, has given the companies an opening to exert their political influence over the debate in Carson City.

Whittlesea President Brent Bell said Tuesday he's lobbying lawmakers hard for the right to keep cameras with sound in his cabs. He loves the cameras because they have become a "management tool" to, as he put it, "weed out the bad apples."

Longtime taxi mogul Charlie Frias, whose five companies make up 33 percent of the industry, is taking the opposite route. He's lobbying lawmakers for a bill to prohibit the requirement of cameras in cabs altogether, and he has powerbroker Sig Rogich doing his bidding.

Anything is liable to happen by the time the Legislature gets around to dealing with this issue.

The saddest thing is that no one is listening to the opinions of those who really matter in this debate -- drivers like Greg Bambic.

They have a right to work in a safe environment like the rest of us.