Rocket Talk: When's the TTC Going to Roll Out More Fare Collection Methods?
Newsstand: November 9, 2009
Zack Taylor in Disney Mama Drama
The Daily Photoist: November 9, 2009
Santa's Weston Workshop
Eight people face 101 charges in an ATM scam which allegedly involved placing equipment on bank machines to steal customer PINs and data. Hey, you know what the real scam is? Paying service charges to get my own money out of the bank! Am I right, folks? Huh? Am I right? Thanks, you've been a great audience.
CBC is reportedly considering using the Stompin' Tom Connors classic tune "The Hockey Game" as the new theme for Hockey Night In Canada broadcasts. In related news, the music for the processional at the Vatican Christmas mass this year will be "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer."
A study by academics from Ryerson, York, and U of T says that Toronto taxi drivers are treated badly by police and often ticketed unfairly, possibly due to racism. The report is based on interviews with cabbies, so you know the research is rock solid.
The prosecution in the "Toronto 18" terror trial have basically called their key witness Mubin Shaikh a liar, suggesting he's making misleading statements in an attempt to protect one of the young defendants. A spokeperson for the Crown's legal team said, "But he's totally telling the truth about everything else."
Photo by Jay Morrison from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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Why would you assume researchers who interview taxi drivers about their experiences with the police would not be "rock solid."
I remember a lot of hub bub about the NDP wanting to remove ATM fees. Like most things in the news it died down quickly, and here we are with nothing changed.
Nicole28 - because interviews with taxi drivers are a great way to get taxi driver's opinions, but a lousy way to gather empirical evidence demonstrating that cabbies are mistreated by police.
I haven't read the report, but methodologically speaking, talking to people about their experiences with police is, in fact, the way to gather empirical evidence about being mistreated by the police. Why would you assume that taxi drivers' experiences are just opinions? Are they not good judges of their own experiences? Would you desire more "objective" evidence? In this instance, I assume examining police reports would not reveal the whole (if any part) of the story.
Interviewing people and framing their experiences within a larger theoretical framework and gathering other evidence is, in fact, the way to do social science research. Being skeptical of the testimonies of taxi drivers seems strange, considering the medium in which you practice your craft (the journalistic interview as a way to make the case for a story).
No talking to people about their experience is not a proper method for determining what happened. It's fine for assessing attitudes and perceptions, but it's just as invalid as asking the Police as to whether they ever mistreat cabbies for racist reasons.
If Mr. X gets a ticket, he's very likely to blame a misunderstanding, animus on the part of the ticketing agent, fascist government, idiotic rules, incompetence of the official, or whatever, rather than Mr. X bing fully at fault. See sports fans and calls against their team. Sometimes they're right (NBA) but it's not always a conspiracy against you (Italian fans whining about the Holland game, I'm looking at you!).
To do a proper study, one would need to examine the data on arrests and tickets based on race, or using names as a rough proxy for ethnicty/race. Datamining could get you some correlations which you could then examine by sending out volunteer actors to get arrested, having recording equipment on to objectively capture behaviour.
You'd have one hell of a time getting it past human subject review: "so you want to hire x # of people to violate traffic laws and see how they're treated when they're arrested? Application DENIED!" But that is how proper studies are done, like the research that indicates that having an identifiably underclass name (Billy-Bob or Tawniqua) is going to screw up your chances of getting a job, no matter how good your resume. They sent out identical resumes but changed the names, and the Robert Smiths and Susanne Stevensons got more interviews than the Tawniquas.
I have no idea about the various ethicalities of the polling methods, but just based on my own experience, Taxi drivers should be getting more tickets than the average public because the drive like maniacs as compared to the average public.
The number of times I've been in a vehicle that was cut off by a taxi is shocking.
Maybe that's why the cops are predisposed to treat them unfairly. It seems a taxi driver is much more likely to be a reckless driver than other drivers. It's not right, but it makes sense. And racism has very little to do with it (in this particular instance anyways).
The issue cuts both ways; TPS is of course never going to admit that they ever ever treat anybody badly. From what I gathered from the Sun article, the experiences of cab drivers is being reported and it doesn't claim as fact that this is what is actually occuring. However, I have not read the report, and I do not know whether the authors have analyzed ticketing incidents, complaints, and the demographics.
As much as I think its problematic, one of the core tenets of how representative democracy works is that people tell their elected official how they feel about how the government treats them, and government acts on that. This is an example of that, merely mediated by academics.