Airport war-fare
Illegal-cabbie busts soar amid crackdown
Everybody's hustlin' at the city's airports.
The Port Authority saw a massive jump in cabbie hustler arrests at the city's three major airports last year, authorities said Wednesday.
Arrests of drivers illegally soliciting rides from travelers flying into Kennedy Airport saw the largest surge — 68% — the Port Authority said.
By the end of 2018, police arrested 734 hustling cabbies at Kennedy — 297 more than the 437 arrested in 2017, officials said.
A similar increase was found at Newark Airport, which saw a rise in busts from 88 to 142.
At LaGuardia Airport there was a 7% bump in illegal cabbie arrests in 2018, authorities said.
The Port Authority announced a major crack down on the cabbies in August after some high-profile arrests.
Cops nabbed a 61-year-old driver illegally trolling for fares at JFK — then refused to let a woman out of his car after she changed her mind about the sketchy ride, authorities said.
The 37-year-old victim allegedly told cops Daniel Todaro approached her outside of one of the departure terminals and offered to drive her home about 1 a.m. on April 6.
He falsely claimed to be a licensed livery driver, so she got in, but quickly changed her mind. Todaro began arguing with her, locked the doors and refused to let her leave, she told police.
Cops heard her screams and ran over to Todaro's vehicle, where they found the panicked woman locked in the back seat, authorities said.
Then, on July 17, a gypsy cab driver led police on a chase through a terminal at LaGuardia.
Marco Morales-Carrillo, 32, was offering people offthe-books rides outside of Terminal B when a Port Authority cop overheard one of his pitches.
When he saw the police, Morales-Carrillo raced up to the second level to the departures drop off, jumped over a railing on the elevated roadway — and fell one story onto a car below.
Livery cab drivers — some licensed, some not — have been known to cajole and harass people into hiring them, even though they are prohibited from soliciting fares at city airports.
Licensed livery cab drivers can only make prearranged pickups at city airports.
Some of the hustlers no longer have TLC licenses. Others have been repeatedly banned from picking up fares in the airports.
A Port Authority spokeswoman said the crackdown will continue this year. New “No soliciting” and “No unauthorized pick up” signs have already been placed around the airports, the spokeswoman said.