Metro Atlanta buried another cab driver Saturday, the latest for a dangerous trade that locally has averaged at least two people killed per year for a decade.
Jacke Rainey, 49, was shot several times Aug. 7 after he had gone to pick up a fare at 4 a.m. at an East Point apartment complex.
Before joining the funeral procession in their taxis from the Day & Night Cab Company of College Park, fellow drivers lamented that Rainey didn't have a protective partition in his cab or a security camera.The protective devices aren't required in Atlanta or College Park. They are mandatory in places such as New York or Winnipeg, Manitoba, where safety advocates contend they have deterred crime and saved lives.
"We need to do more to protect drivers, especially in this economy," said Robert Lowery, before starting his taxi at the Harvesttime Apostolic Ministries church in Riverdale. "I think it should be mandatory for the cab company to put in a shield."
At least 22 other metro Atlanta cabbies have been killed on the job since 2000, according to a national website, taxi-library.org, which promotes driver safety.
A push four years ago by Malachi Hull, the former director of Atlanta's Bureau of Taxicabs and Vehicles, to require shields and cameras fizzled in the face of opposition from both company owners and some drivers, who generally lease the taxis and operate as independent contractors.
The protective gear can be expensive, however, and the design of all cars doesn't lend itself to easy installation of a bullet-proof barrier between the front and back seats. Plus some drivers fear the barrier will not only isolate them from their fares but better tips because they cut down on conversation.
Lowery said he had a shield installed after Rainey was killed. "I paid for my own," he said.
Larry Jones, another driver for Day & Night, said his colleagues don't want to pay for the shields themselves. He said company owners are often operating on thin profit margins and shouldn't have to pick up an extra expense, especially when drivers are often behind on their lease payments for the cars the owner maintains.
"They only see the owner taking the money but there are a lot of expenses behind the scenes," Jones said. "They pay what they can and he (the owner) allows them to do that. He's very fair."
The safety gear has proven effective. A three-year study in Winnipeg found a 79 percent reduction in deaths after shields were mandated and a 66 percent reduction in robberies after cameras were installed.
Sharif Ahmad, who drives for Day & Night, said cameras ought to be mandated in metro Atlanta or at least companies should install them voluntarily, but he didn't expect that his company would do it anytime soon.
"The owner is 84 years old, and he never had a shield or a camera," Ahmad said. "He is from the old school."
Attempts to reach Day & Night officials, W .R. Dunson, and Ed Dunson, were unsuccessful.
Taxi drivers are 60 times more likely than other workers to be murdered while on the job, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health said in a May 2000 report. They are also among those assaulted the most. Only police and private security guards have a higher rate of non-fatal assault, the agency said.
It is hard to determine the total number of cab driver deaths in metro Atlanta because no entity keeps complete records. Taxi-library.org uses news clips to record deaths, which it acknowledges means it likely under counts. The web site lists 34 dead cabbies in metro Atlanta from 1983 to 2009 and also includes a death from 1959. Nothing is listed from in between.
It's harder still to gauge how many drivers are robbed or assaulted because the incidents are not classified separately in police reports.
But news accounts show there have been at least two more assaults on metro Atlanta cabbies this year.
In April, a robber wounded a cabbie, Akintoye Olabodgajewold, in Clayton County after confronting him outside an ATM machine. Police say the robber killed himself when officers cornered him after the shooting. In northwest Atlanta, a driver was beaten and had his taxi stolen in July.
Jones said drivers need to be extra careful, especially in the wee hours. Cab companies take safety precautions such as getting the name, address and destination of callers requesting a taxi, but those precautions have their limitations especially in areas with multiple apartment complexes, Jones said.
"Somebody can just walk up to the cab and you don't know if it is the person who called or not," Jones said. "And even if it is not, you've driven all the way out there and you might not want to lose the fare."
Many of the crimes go unsolved. That wasn't the case in the Rainey killing. East Point Police charged 19-year-old Danny Kirtz with armed robbery and murder a week after Rainey was found dead inside his cab near Oak Knoll Elementary School
"Kudos to them," Jones said.
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