Taxi Driver Online

You may have had experience of the following.a pre-booked fare decides that they dont want to pay the fare,and states that they have not got any money.You spot the highly visible police officers standing on the corner!!!! and call for assistance,the officers listens to your complaint and announces that this is a civil matter and that the police cannot get involved and begins to walk away.....you then advise the officers of the above act and inform them that you will speak to a senior officer about this as some corrective training needs to be undertaken by pcs......... The law states that it is a criminal offence to procure or engage/obtain services
dishonestly and that you want the law to be up-held.. any comments ?

You're nicked my son for that bald tyre and broken tail light.

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Grandad,

The easiest way to get a conviction is not through the 2006 Fraud Act, but via sections 1 or 3 of the 1978 Theft Act.

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IDFIMH

Wow you have real policemen round your way

it is very difficult to get the police involved in any way taxis like many businesses are a low priority. Police priorities tend to be in areas which central government are keen to fund.

if you think your punters are a tad dodgy CASH UP FRONT

We've had several threads on the Fraud act and other related legislation, the general consensus by taxi drivers on here is that very few police officers understand this particular area of the law or perhaps for convenience they prefer not to understand it? The following is one such thread from Nov 2006.

http://taxi-driver.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=59391

Regards

JD

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Copyright notice © The contents of this post are copyright of JD and are not to be reproduced outside of TDO without written permission.

HAHAHAHAHAH - unless its a hackney

Ive had to ask for cash up front many times, genuinely some of those punters think its a persoanl blur on their credibility.

I always tell them this is the way we do business and its nothing personal, this is for mostly out of city jobs, not local.

As JD says we've discussed this many times before and the general rule of things seems to be that if someone is genunine (ie they've lost their wallet but don't realise this until the end of the journey) then it's a civil matter, but if they never had any intention of paying and said nothing to the driver then it's criminal.

I'm sure that most police officers will be aware of this in general terms, but they may not be, they may just simply not want to get involved and thus fob the driver off, or they may just think there's insufficient evidence to make a case, or whatever, even though they know the culprit is guilty.

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Taxi Driver Online
www.taxi-driver.co.uk

Evidence and the possibility of a prosecution is what will get the Police involved. I've had one "customer" who did a runner on me for a £27 fare end up with a £100 fine.
However I now have a camera system which records both vision and sound, it works continuously and is the best investment I've made. I've only had one unpaid fare in the 8 months or so since it was installed and that was only 2 kiddies going about 1 mile so I didn't follow it up.

My system if from Xtron and is not cheap ( about £600) but it works a treat!

Get a camera/sound system then you will have evidence and the police will be interested in your complaint cos it could show up as a successful prosecution.

ps I would always recommend making a formal report of a crime as it goes on their statistics as an unsolved and if you don't report crimes then the powers that be will use official statistics to tell you there isn't a problem.

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Our safety is Paramount

You can obviously report any crime but I was wondering how you could make a formal complaint about a crime and attribute that crime to an unknown person and expect it to be placed on the unknown persons record as an unsolved crime?

Very interesting.

The next time I have a runner i'll ask them to leave their name and address so I can make out a formal crime report.

Regards

JD

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Copyright notice © The contents of this post are copyright of JD and are not to be reproduced outside of TDO without written permission.

Oh JD, why do you always try to pull holes in perfectly straightforward statements?

As you well know , a person can report a crime even if they don't know the identity of the person who committed it. I never said anything about putting it on an unknown persons record, it will simply appear in overall police statistics.

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Our safety is Paramount

Agh! By "their" statistics, you mean the police statistics.

Forgive me for being confused. lol

Regards

JD

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Copyright notice © The contents of this post are copyright of JD and are not to be reproduced outside of TDO without written permission.