A “neighborhood watch on wheels” program that Denver police credit with the arrest of four people suspected of involvement in a fatal hit- and-run is poised to go national.
Robert McBride, owner of Metro Taxi and president of the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association, a transportation-industry trade group, plans to encourage TLPA operators to initiate the Taxis on Patrol program in their cities at the group’s spring convention next week in Chicago.
As part of the program, drivers learn to provide real-time reporting to police of crimes in progress, auto accidents and other emergencies. Metro Taxi, Yellow Cab, Freedom Cab and Union Taxi drivers are all part of the program.
McBride kick-started the program in Denver after being elected to the TLPA presidency last year. When he took office, he told the association’s members that a Taxis on Patrol program was among his priorities.
Back in Denver, he contacted police who were interested in a partnership with the cab companies, and the program started in January.
It remains to be seen how many TLPA members will be interested.
“We are going to give (TLPA members) a template and a presentation on how to get ready . . . let them know that their passion behind this is what is going to get the buy-in from the drivers,” said Larry L. Stevenson, program spokesman and recruiting manager at Metro Taxi.
“I expect 100 percent participation. Will we get that? That remains to be seen,” Stevenson said.
Police Lt. Steve Addison, who oversees Taxis on Patrol for the department, said he expects law enforcement agencies throughout the country to embrace TOPs, which gives police extra eyes and ears on the street.
“I think the police departments will jump on it, but you have to have that willingness from the cab companies to take it on,” Addison said.
Program’s early success
On the first day the program was up and running in Denver, Metro cabbie Max DeBarros was driving downtown on Lincoln Street when a pickup truck slammed into parking valet Jose Medina, 21, and killed him.
DeBarros, who had just finished training for the program, followed the truck and took down the license- plate number.
He would have acted the same way if he hadn’t been trained, he said. But TOPs opened his eyes to techniques needed to act as a more effective witness, he added.
Cabbies involved in the program are told to “always be careful, if you to try to follow somebody, make sure you are not going to create an accident. Don’t approach too closely and don’t try to do the police job. Our job is to report and try to catch as much information as we can.”
They are taught to scope out suspects from the top of their head down to their shoes so they can offer effective identifications.
Police hailed the arrests as a victory for the program and since that time have reported more than 60 incidents, many of which led to arrests as a result of calls from cabbies.
“I was very surprised to see this many incidents in such a short time, but we have gotten some bad people off the street,” McBride said.
Idea has been around
TLPA operators see the program “as a great way to partner with the police and give back to the community, so it seems like everyone is excited about it,” said Joseph Giannetto, director of business development for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade in New York.
Word of the program’s success is spreading, McBride said. Owners of transportation companies in Paris and the United Kingdom have shown interest.
There are similar programs in Toronto and Houston, and Yellow Cab of Baltimore has had a program in cooperation with police for more than 20 years.
Some programs that had successful starts have disappeared. The first, in Far Rockaway, a crime-ridden, beachfront neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., got off the ground in 1973.
Citibank sponsored that program, but it eventually ended.
“As it got into the ’80s, it lost its spunk and it sort of fizzled out. When you go through bad times and a down economy, sometimes some of these feel-good programs fall by the wayside,” McBride said.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
