Despite a number of shocking assault charges and a DWI arrest, taxi driver Ramez Akladious (pictured) continued driving his cab with a suspended probationary license throughout 2008. According to the Post, he had been repeatedly arrested for a number of incidents, which included slashing a rider with a box cutter after he criticized him for taking an unnecessarily long route; striking a man in the face; driving drunk; and assaulting a driver by smashing his side view mirror, then his face.
But Akladious's fun and games came to an end after a January run-in with one Phedra Braxton, the operations manager for the Taxi and Limousine Commission. After he told her his credit-card machine was broken, she asked him to stop by an ATM, at which point he locked the car doors and threatened to call the cops. Braxton tells the Post:
He grabbed my jacket and bag through the partition window. I said, 'Get off me, what are you doing?' He tried to spit on me . . . When I got out and started screaming, he said, 'I should have never picked your black ass up. You black people never pay.' Here I am, an employee for the TLC, and all the years I caught cabs, I never had an encounter like that before. It's unbelievable that people like that are allowed to drive and deal with the public . . . The worst part of this is that he never should have been driving.
Akladious's probationary license was revoked after the incident and he was slapped with a $4,350 fine, but he never responded to the ruling. Oddly, the TLC does not know what company Akladious drove for, and the Post, deeming him the "most dangerous taxi driver" in town, ominously suggests that he may still be "on the loose," slashing and spitting on innocent riders. If so, he's not alone; previously on bad cabbies: sexual assaults, credit card fights, and iPod bartering. Now the city is installing cameras in some cabs to monitor drivers.
