A crew of teenage thieves armed with pepper spray have turned robbing city taxi and livery drivers into a cottage industry — and are responsible for about 20 heists across the five boroughs, taxi advocates said Thursday.
At least one of the young suspects who have been robbing cabbies since January was arrested, but then released from court without bail, angering taxi advocates, who are demanding prosecutors take a stronger stance against these teen terrors.
“They’re targeting yellows, they’re targeting liveries, they’re targeting whatever they can get,” New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers spokesman Fernando Mateo said at a press conference in the Bronx Thursday. “Why do they continue to do it? Because the judges are letting them go, because the district attorney sometimes doesn’t demand bail, because no one has physically been injured other than being pepper sprayed.”
Since Jan. 21, the cab-robbing crew, consisting of girls and one boy, all between 17 and 19 years old, have committed at least 19 robberies against taxi and livery drivers, police said.
Typically, at least one member of the team hails a ride. Then, once they get inside, they say they have to pick up a friend, cops said. Once the friend is picked up, they pepper spray the cab driver and make off with the hack’s cash, cellphone and wallet, cops said.
The robberies have taken place in Midtown, Harlem and Queens, Federation members and police said. The most violent surge occurred between April 25 and May 4, when the teens committed seven pepper-spray robberies against cabbies in just three days, they said.
Livery driver Juan Grullon, 32, was one of the crew’s victims. He picked up the thieves in his Tesla in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx and was asked to drop them off on the Upper East Side at Madison Ave. and E. 77th St., he recounted.
But, just before the drop-off, they suddenly changed their destination.
“They told me, like, ‘Oh, take this left here,’” he recalled. “I feel like, ‘Oh, this is a little bit weird.’”
Right after the suspects had feigned to decide who was going to pay Grullon, one of them stepped out of the cab, opened the driver’s door and doused him with pepper spray.
“He pepper sprayed all the way in my hair and everything, my clothes and everything,” Grullon recalled. “[It was] like itchy, and everywhere. I have asthma, too. So it was very difficult to breathe. My eyes were burning.”
With Grullon disoriented, the car accelerated ahead. All the while, the brazen thieves rifled through his glove box and pockets, looking for valuables.
“I moved the car, like, a little bit. I was scared to hit the cars because my eyes [were] closed. I could hit somebody or something,” he remembered worrying. “They take my wallet and everything, and I accelerate again. And they get out [of] the car and run away with all my stuff.”
The teens then used Grullon’s credit cards to buy tacos and pizza and on a quick shopping trip to Duane Reade, the victim was told.
“It’s so scary,” he said. “I’m scared now even to work. You don’t know if they have a knife or something. You don’t know, because you are with your eyes closed, so you don’t know what’s happening around you. You just now feel somebody touching you and reaching [into] your pocket.”
The kids who robbed Grullon were possibly LGBTQ and seemed to be “just very nice people,” until they pounced, Mateo said.
“Once they’re in there, they become criminals,” he said.
There may well be even more cab drivers who have been targeted as part of the larger pattern.
“These kids did it to over 20 drivers that were reported,” Mateo said. “I’m sure that they probably did it to many more that didn’t report it because they don’t want to waste any time off the road.”
At least one of the suspects believed involved has been arrested twice for these robberies and was released without bail, probably due to being a teenager, Mateo said.
“We’re asking our legislators, ‘Guys, if you see that these people, whether they’re kids or not, if they’re committing adult crimes, you’ve got to punish them accordingly,’” he said.
Anyone with information about this robbery crew is asked to contact NYPD Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.
