200 Protesting Cabbies Ask Curbs on ‘Bandits’ : Taxis: They claim city has failed to crack down. One unlicensed driver says he’s in it for the money--$150 per night.

While some 200 angry drivers circled City Hall in their taxicabs Wednesday, cabbie Tony Diaz was waiting to go to work.

To show their frustration over the city’s failure to crack down on so-called bandit taxicabs, the licensed drivers continuously honked their horns.

Diaz, who makes his living as a bandit cab driver, was waiting for nightfall, when he hits the streets in his bright yellow Chevrolet, outfitted with a radio and meter, looking for all the world like a real taxi.

The demonstration took place because the owners and drivers of the 1,347 taxicabs licensed to operate in the city--and who pay more than $800 a year in fees for the privilege--want to get rid of bandits such as Diaz.

The demonstration was cut short when Los Angeles police officers started issuing tickets to the drivers for what was described as unnecessary use of their horns. Dianne Wohlleben, an official of one taxi group, said angrily: “It’d be great if these cops would be out giving tickets and harassing the bandits instead of us.”

“We’re being taxed, our drivers get fingerprinted and licensed, and the bandits don’t have to do anything,” said Dennis Rouse, vice president of the company operating the city’s largest fleet, the 300-car LA Taxi. He estimated that his company loses 500 fares a day to bandits, whom, officials said, number between 300 and 500.

Diaz, formerly a legal driver who asked that his real name not be used, said he makes about $150 a night.

“They make good money, and if they weren’t there a regular cab driver would be making $25 to $50 more a day at least,” said Roy Parkin, a driver for Bell Cab Co. who attended the demonstration.

City officials claim bandit cabs not only drive unsafe cars and set meters that overcharge their clients, but also deprive the city of an estimated $400,000 a year in fees.

The city’s Department of Transportation has a four-person bandit detail that does nothing but search out illegal cabs.

But the bandits endure, flouting the rules, intercepting dispatches from the legal taxi fleets, and winning their cat-and-mouse game with the city.

“They’ve been there forever,” transportation official George Cuttrell, 73, said wearily in a recent interview.

Los Angeles is a tough town for cabbies. In a place where the car reigns, residents are more inclined to drive themselves--or call a friend--than flag a cab. Legal drivers usually have to lease their cabs, at $60 or more per 12-hour shift, and pay their own gas, which usually costs $20 a day. With the average taxi ride costing an estimated $6, it takes many fares to make a profit.

Becoming a bandit was a simple matter of economics, Diaz said. “Everything I make, I keep.”

Diaz said he finds it easy to keep his illegal trade going. He knows the faces of all inspectors on the bandit detail, he said.

When they stand on street corners pretending to be regular passengers, waiting to catch bandits, “I just wave and keep driving. It’s a big game.”

The city’s efforts to eliminate bandit cabs have been sporadic and generally unsuccessful. The last major crackdown came last summer after Mayor Tom Bradley branded bandit cabbies a “menace to the city.”

More than 90 drivers were then arrested in a one-month sting. But no one was prosecuted, authorities said, because the city attorney determined that investigators had tripped over some procedural details.

“I do believe for the safety of the public we should have more enforcement,” said Thomas Conner, assistant general manager of the transportation department.

Like most bandit cabs, Diaz’s is easy to spot: it’s yellow. Any cab painted all yellow is illegal in the city, as is any car with the “Yellow Cab” moniker on it. The city no longer has any licensed carrier with that name, but it is so instantly recognizable to passengers that it is a favorite of bandits. Diaz’s car is called an “Independent Yellow” cab.

He also has a fake black-and-white sticker on his front door, reading “Los Angeles County Permit,” “It’s from a print shop,” Diaz said. “It’s for looks.”

Legal cabs have taxi stands around the city where they park, and so do bandits. The latter have acknowledged “spots,” such as at 8th and Alvarado streets, or they park across the street from legal stands at hotels or the downtown bus terminal.

Many have scanner radios to monitor calls from licensed companies as they transmit customer addresses to their drivers. “Then we just go and pick up the fare,” Diaz said. The passengers “just get right in,” he said. “They don’t look at the name.”

Diaz belongs to a fleet of 39 bandit cars using a shared dispatch system that broadcasts in Spanish from a house just outside of downtown. To evade city inspectors, they communicate by using code names for actual streets.

“City Hall has scanners that can listen to our transmissions,” Diaz said. “If we give out an address like 7th and Figueroa, City Hall will be there waiting for us. So each street goes by a different name. “

Although officials say the bandit cabs overcharge clients, have unsafe cars, and inadequate insurance, the city has no hard statistics to back its claims. Officials cannot say, for example, exactly how much more passengers are paying than the city’s mandated rates, which are $1.90 at the start of the ride, and $1.60 per mile. “It’s more from personal observation by the investigators,” said Kenneth Cude, head of the transportation department’s franchise regulation division.

Hideo Ohta, who has a license to operate 23 cabs in the city of Compton but is considered a bandit because he dispatches his fleet in Los Angeles, said the city and its licensed operators just want to lock out competition. “I’ve been trying for 12 years to get a license,” he said. “It’s all politics.”

But Cude said Ohta has only just recently applied to operate legally in the city.

On one weeknight, Diaz got only three fares in eight hours, and earned $18. The first two were under the influence of drugs, and made him stop at certain street corners to buy more crack, he said.

The third rode about a mile, and then didn’t have his $3 fare. He told Diaz he would go inside a place to get money from a friend. As a show of good faith, he left Diaz the paper bag he carried.

But the passenger never came back, and Diaz found only one dirty pair of pants inside the bag.

Diaz drove to the bus depot, one of his haunts where bandits have a distinct advantage. Legal cab drivers, by city regulation, face $90 fines if they leave their cars to solicit fares.

“We’ve got the run of the place,” he said, chuckling as he breezed past the legal cabs parked at the stand. If there is a good customer inside, he added, a Greyhound employee would steer him Diaz’s way before he got outside to the legal cabs.

Wednesday’s demonstration was sparked by a LA Taxi driver who walked inside the terminal on Sunday to complain about bandits, Rouse said, and then got arrested for trespassing after a heated argument with a security guard.

“You wonder whose side the city is on,” Rouse said.