Last night's bilk

I was heading down park lane when a hand went up at a bus stop, so I had to do that thing where you look in the rear view mirror to see if there’s a bus behind you, then, make eye contact with the person to make sure it’s definitely you she is hailing. There was no bus, so I pulled over, only for 3 young guys to come to the window from the back of the queue instead of the woman whose hand went up first. As she wasn’t walking toward me I asked where these people wanted to go. They were about 20 years old, two black and one white, and they type of people that used the phrase ‘ya get me’. If there’s anyone on this here Earth that I immediately take a dislike to is those people who use this term; NO I DON’T BLOODY GET YOU, WHY DON’T YOU EXPLAIN IT TO ME? They asked if it would be more than £30 to Fulham Broadway, even though I had a little feeling that this was to put me at ease; that they had £30 and therefore I wouldn’t have anything to worry about. As I hadn’t had any “trouble” for a long time (except a couple of sickies and some spilt wine) I let them in the cab against my better judgement. They were right young geezers, and even though they were trying to be chatty and overly friendly (something that would usually make me very suspicious) I gave them the benefit of the doubt. The first spike on my concern graph (besides the “street accent”) was when they said they needed a cash machine literally as we pulled away. They said there was a Sainsbury’s in Fulham they could use, but I decided to stop at the first I saw in order to see that they actually had access to money. The first was on Knightsbridge, and as soon as one of them was out I was already being told that these machines didn’t work with their card. I didn’t understand what that meant until the one that got out came to my window and asked what ‘you card has been denied’ meant; well, exactly what it says on the tin I would have thought. He then showed me his card, which looked like a very basic credit card. He told me that it was a cash card, and that it’s the type you put funds on. One side of me was saying to get rid of them there, but the other side was saying ‘they owe for the trip to here so far’. Well I took them on to Fulham where they said it could only be used in supermarket machines. One of them asked me about my sat nav, how much it cost, and what model it was; his response told me what kind of people they were – ‘I can get you lots of sat navs’. Why the hell would I want more than one? Another little sign that this was all wrong was while we were stopped, and one of the boys asked me if we could stop the meter until we were moving again. He then went on to ask if he could have me number to use me privately. I asked him why he would want to use a black cab if he thought they were so expensive (he also commented how unfair it was about the £2.20 minimum at the start). He tried to say it was because it would look better among his friends if he was driven around in a black cab instead of a cheap minicab. Instead of stopping in Fulham Broadway as asked, they took me all the way to the Sainsbury’s in Townmead Road. As soon as I was at the cashpoints and one went over to them, the other two got out and started edging closer to the riverside. The one by the cashpoint said there was a problem, that he couldn’t get any money out, so I locked the cab and went over to have a look; I could hear a small jeer from the other 2 who obviously weren’t expecting this. He told me to watch what happens when he put his numbers in; it told him he had insufficient funds. I then got very serious and said ‘right, this bulls**t, you better find some other way of getting the money or I’m calling the police’. He then motioned to the other two to give him their phone so he could call his mum. He went through 3 phones, all of which went dead conveniently as he was typing the number in. I then got my phone out and asked for the number; now a number they were typing into their own phones was suddenly impossible for them to remember. ‘Right, I’m calling the police’ I told them, and as I dialled the number they a laughed and jogged off around the back of the supermarket. I got the police on the line as I still had them in sight, then while still giving location and descriptions, I got in my cab and headed down the adjacent street to where they had gone. There were several exits through the flats, so I was trying to guess how far they would have got to, but as I got out my cab and turned, I saw them running toward Townmead road. I quickly got back in and headed after them again. By the time I pulled up next to them they hadn’t even noticed I had caught up with them. I had the officer on the phone all the way to the end of Stephendale Road, where I knew a dead end was on its way. Just before we all got there I had put all my equipment and money in my rucksack ready to get out on foot. I wasn’t quick enough however, because when they headed through the gate and into the dark green, I lost which direction they went in. I had the police on the phone the whole time, and picked one of the exits to try my luck – they had definitely gone. There were some nearby flats which they would have definitely gone into by then, so I knew the chase was over. I met a police van on Imperial Road coming out of Fulmead Street in a hurry, and I made contact to confirm I was the driver. We both knew they would have gone inside by now, so I shook the drivers hand and thanked him for coming. I keep looking back over the whole thing and wondering what I can learn from this. Unfortunately because there have been many people I have picked up, who I had thought were going to be trouble (and sometimes were) but still got paid, it’s impossible to know who the ones are that are actually going to do a runner. In 6 years of doing this job, I would say that, off the top of my head, I have only had about 4-5 runners (ones that actually got away), so it’s not something to warrant a complete change of practises unfortunately. Several others have tried, but I caught them, called the police, left the meter running, and got the police to make them pay the amount up to that point.

So remember that one cabbies –

-‘ya get me’ boys
-cashcard that can only be used at their destination
-2 black and one white.
-the white was skinny, short hair, blue shorts, grey and blue rucksack
-one black boy had 2-3inch afro, reasonably built, wearing an Orange JD sports bag diagonally over his back
-other black boy had short plats, was a bit overweight, and was wearing (I think) a grey t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms
-they were all about the same height (about 5ft 3 – 5ft 5) and were not intimidating
-They lived in the vicinity of Peartree Court and the end of Stephendale Road SW6.