If a taxi driver had a choice between picking up a female passenger or a couple of regular guys, which fare would the driver select? The woman would lose out every time says local lawyer Al Marquis.
To prove his point, Marquis choreographed his own undercover investigation and says he has clear evidence of widespread discrimination against women and other potential customers.
"If you tip a waiter in a restaurant, that's for good service. But if they are going to spit in your food unless you tip them, that's extortion. And what we're dealing with here is extortion," he said.
Like most Las Vegans, veteran attorney Al Marquis has heard about strip club kickbacks to cab and limo drivers for years.
As the I-Team has reported previously, local adult clubs pay a bounty to drivers, a cash bonus for every customer dropped at the door. Until recently, the amounts ranged from $20 to $75 a head. As of late 2008, the top clubs were shelling out a whopping $3.5 million a month to drivers -- more than $40 million a year.
Now, though, the biggest clubs have upped it to $100 a head, which Marquis says has made a bad situation even worse, "Cab drivers subject passengers to high pressure tactics when they get in the cab. They want to take her where the cab driver wants to go, not where the riders want to go."
Diverting passengers for a kickback is illegal for drivers, but the Taxi Authority admits it has never enforced the rule.
A lawsuit filed last year by two clubs seeks to force the state to enforce the law, but Marquis has come up with a new argument -- one that could spark a public outcry. He hired some actors and a camera crew to demonstrate his theory that drivers discriminate.
Given a choice between a potential female passenger and a couple of guys who might be strip club bound, drivers bypass the woman every single time. True, they only ran their experiment eight times, a small sample, but the results were pretty clear.
"It's tough for a young woman to get a ride standing on the curb because these cab drivers know they have an opportunity to make $100 a head if they pick up these young men. Everybody should be concerned about their wives and daughters. What's going to happen to them if they need a ride?" he said.
Marquis thinks it's bad for Las Vegas to treat visitors like a mark, gouging them at the strip clubs and discriminating at taxi stands. He formed an organization called Fairness in Transportation and wants the legislature to finally put some teeth into anti-diversion rules, especially now that tourist dollars aren't as plentiful.
"People aren't going to want to come back to Las Vegas anymore if that is the climate they are in," he said.
Cab driver advocate Randy Hynes says only a small percentage of cabbies abuse the bounty payments and most need the occasional bonus just to make ends meet.
Marquis agrees that the majority of drivers are honest, but the new bounty of $100 a head is enough to tempt anyone and will lead to more discrimination unless the state takes action.
