Bangor cabdriver shrugs off dangers of job

BANGOR – The cabdrivers at Town Taxi in Bangor are getting somewhat accustomed to the media coverage that highlights the dangers of their job.

Reporters came last fall after 60-year-old Donna Leen, a driver for Dick’s Taxi, was killed after picking up a fare at a Stillwater Avenue construction site. They were back Wednesday after a Portland cabdriver was found dead in Pittsfield. At nearly the same time, another Portland driver narrowly escaped injury when police shot and killed a passenger brandishing a gun.

But Jim Kenney of Bangor, a driver for Town Taxi, said while each attack on a cabdriver makes him a bit more wary, for the most part he takes his job and his safety in stride.

“Things like this happen. About any job has its risk,” said the driver while on a quick break at the company’s Broadway headquarters.

“It’s all about judgment,” he said. “There are times when I go to pick up a fare and drive away before they get in because I don’t like the looks of things.”

Working alone and carrying cash, taxi drivers continue to do one of the nation’s most dangerous jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor statistics. The bureau’s 2000 statistics indicated that 70 cabdrivers were killed last year while on duty, for a fatality rate of about 25 for every 100,000 employed.

For comparison, 12 of every 100,000 police officers and about 15 of every 100,000 firefighters died while on duty in 2000, the statistics show.

Bangor Police Detective Lt. Timothy Reid acknowledged those dangers Tuesday noting that while Bangor may be a relatively safe place, “there are dangerous people” out there. And those with the most contact with those people are police and cabdrivers,” Reid said.

“And we are armed and have cages [in our cruisers],” he said. “The cabdrivers have neither.”

Reid said it is not uncommon for police to respond to assaults on cabdrivers and that several times a week they respond to complaints from drivers who have people refusing to pay their fares.

Those incidents of people refusing to pay a fare always have the risk of escalating into an assault.

But Kenney said despite the constant risk, it’s important for drivers to keep things in perspective.

“I mean nine out of 10 fares that I pick up are people that I have picked up before. It’s that one in 10 that I’ve never picked up before that you want to watch out for,” he said.

Kenney and Steve Klimas, owner of Town Taxi, said most drivers were hesitant to install safety devices like cages or plastic windows that separate the driver from the passengers in the back seat.

Both feel such devices generally are not needed in Bangor.

“I don’t think it would help for one thing,” Kenney said, “unless it was bulletproof and unless the windows on the front were bulletproof. There is nothing to stop someone from getting to you if that’s what they intend to do.”

But in May 2000, the secretary of labor said the number of assaults and homicides on cabdrivers “bordered on an epidemic” and released guidelines for safety measures that could protect drivers.

The Bureau of Labor found that cabdrivers were 60 times more likely than any other worker to be murdered on the job. Those statistics prompted the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to encourage cabdrivers to install global-positioning systems in cabs to help locate drivers in distress and to install partitions and video cameras in the cabs.

Klimas said Town Taxi was working on further developing a system that would place GPS in the company’s cabs.

The company uses a computerized dispatch system that allows drivers to tap in a code if they are in trouble. One code means “I might have a problem here,” indicating that the dispatcher should stay tuned, and another code means send police, Klimas said.

While drivers like Kenney feel relatively safe on the job, Reid points to a taxicab robbery in the winter of 2000 when four young men got into a cab in downtown Bangor, had him drive to another neighborhood and then zapped him with a stun gun during a robbery attempt. The driver grabbed his moneybag and ran. Police later learned that the four men were armed with two sawed off shotguns and a handgun, as well as the stun gun.

“That very easily could have turned into something more tragic,” Reid said.

Reid acknowledged the hesitancy to put up a shield and thereby take away a certain familiarity and personal nature that many expect from Bangor cabdrivers, but he said drivers needed to be aware of the risks of the job.

Meanwhile Kenney was headed back out on the road Wednesday afternoon with a shrug.

“You know you use your judgment, but you can’t protect yourself from everything. I mean I’m 6-foot-4 and weigh 240 pounds, but I’m no match for a hammer upside the head. Everything you do has a certain amount of risk,” he said.