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BUSH-HACKED
BY ANDREA PEYSER
October 21, 2004 -- SUPPORTING President Bush is not just socially suicidal in this town — it can endanger your career and cost you big bucks, as one cabby discovered the hard way.
Haitian-born Etzer Jerome was fined $500 and had his license suspended three weeks — a loss of some $5,000 — simply because, he says, he committed a new kind of infraction: Backing Bush While Black.
"I'm a Bush man," Jerome, 49, told me while recounting a story that couldn't happen anyplace else.
As Jerome tells it — and his account is supported, in large part, by Taxi and Limousine Commission documents — a political argument with an ardently Democratic passenger in March devolved into an Upper West Side version of TV's "Crossfire," only far more shrill, ugly and expensive.
It happened after he gave the wrong answer to a passenger's question: "Do you like President Bush?"
On this much, everyone agrees:
On March 3, Jerome, a U.S. citizen who lives on Long Island with his wife and two sons, and owns his own taxi — "I'm a lucky cabby" — was eating lunch in his car at 181st Street and Broadway.
Elizabeth Grainger asked for a ride to 116th Street. He dropped his sandwich, and they drove off.
And then, the young woman brought up politics.
"There was a pleasant conversation for several blocks until Complainant [Grainger] asked Respondent [Jerome] if he liked Pres. Bush," wrote Administrative Law Judge Michael Schwartz, who presided over Jerome's TLC disciplinary hearing in June.
And this is where the warring parties start seeing their struggle as differently as, well, George W. Bush and John Kerry.
Jerome told me the ride went sour after he disagreed, bitterly, with Grainger's assertion that Bush wrongfully helped oust Haitian dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
"Do you like Bush?" Grainger asked Jerome.
"I voted for Bush!" Jerome said he answered.
At that, he contends, Grainger, who is white, spat: "How can a black man vote for Bush?" And she asked him to stop the cab.
Jerome said she jumped out, paid her fare — but only after he tapped the horn — and got into another cab. But, first, he said, she shouted, "I'm going to eff you."
Grainger filed a complaint against Jerome with the TLC, charging him with harassment.
At a June 16 hearing, Grainger testified, tearfully, that Jerome had threatened and verbally abused her.
Based on her testimony, Judge Schwartz concluded that Jerome "became belligerent, threatened Complainant and acted in such a manner that Complainant demanded to be let out of the cab before her destination," he wrote.
Schwartz further lectured Jerome: "Respondent, if he did not want to converse with Complainant, could have said that to her."
Schwartz found Jerome guilty, and slapped him with the fine and suspension. Jerome's appeal was tossed without a hearing.
Reached last night, Grainger, 30 said she felt "terrorized" by Jerome, who she said initially refused to let her out of his cab.
BY ANDREA PEYSER
October 21, 2004 -- SUPPORTING President Bush is not just socially suicidal in this town — it can endanger your career and cost you big bucks, as one cabby discovered the hard way.
Haitian-born Etzer Jerome was fined $500 and had his license suspended three weeks — a loss of some $5,000 — simply because, he says, he committed a new kind of infraction: Backing Bush While Black.
"I'm a Bush man," Jerome, 49, told me while recounting a story that couldn't happen anyplace else.
As Jerome tells it — and his account is supported, in large part, by Taxi and Limousine Commission documents — a political argument with an ardently Democratic passenger in March devolved into an Upper West Side version of TV's "Crossfire," only far more shrill, ugly and expensive.
It happened after he gave the wrong answer to a passenger's question: "Do you like President Bush?"
On this much, everyone agrees:
On March 3, Jerome, a U.S. citizen who lives on Long Island with his wife and two sons, and owns his own taxi — "I'm a lucky cabby" — was eating lunch in his car at 181st Street and Broadway.
Elizabeth Grainger asked for a ride to 116th Street. He dropped his sandwich, and they drove off.
And then, the young woman brought up politics.
"There was a pleasant conversation for several blocks until Complainant [Grainger] asked Respondent [Jerome] if he liked Pres. Bush," wrote Administrative Law Judge Michael Schwartz, who presided over Jerome's TLC disciplinary hearing in June.
And this is where the warring parties start seeing their struggle as differently as, well, George W. Bush and John Kerry.
Jerome told me the ride went sour after he disagreed, bitterly, with Grainger's assertion that Bush wrongfully helped oust Haitian dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
"Do you like Bush?" Grainger asked Jerome.
"I voted for Bush!" Jerome said he answered.
At that, he contends, Grainger, who is white, spat: "How can a black man vote for Bush?" And she asked him to stop the cab.
Jerome said she jumped out, paid her fare — but only after he tapped the horn — and got into another cab. But, first, he said, she shouted, "I'm going to eff you."
Grainger filed a complaint against Jerome with the TLC, charging him with harassment.
At a June 16 hearing, Grainger testified, tearfully, that Jerome had threatened and verbally abused her.
Based on her testimony, Judge Schwartz concluded that Jerome "became belligerent, threatened Complainant and acted in such a manner that Complainant demanded to be let out of the cab before her destination," he wrote.
Schwartz further lectured Jerome: "Respondent, if he did not want to converse with Complainant, could have said that to her."
Schwartz found Jerome guilty, and slapped him with the fine and suspension. Jerome's appeal was tossed without a hearing.
Reached last night, Grainger, 30 said she felt "terrorized" by Jerome, who she said initially refused to let her out of his cab.
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