Mayor Bill de Blasio says he is furious at revelations in a Post report that city cabbies and ride-share drivers are avoiding Chinese passengers over fears of the coronavirus.
“This is OUTRAGEOUS,” Hizzoner tweeted over the weekend. “Let me be perfectly clear: there WILL be consequences for anyone caught taking part in this kind of cruel racial profiling.
“To our Asian American community: your city has your back and this discrimination will NOT be tolerated,” he added.
Taxi & Limousine Commission chief Aloysee Heredia Jarmoszuk also slammed the reports of rider discrimination, urging anyone who experiences such an incident to alert the city through 311.
“Not in our city. Fare refusal is illegal — we won’t stand for discrimination against our Asian American community,” she said in a tweet. “Fear is the enemy, not our neighbors.”
Some ride-share drivers have told The Post that they’ve been avoiding certain neighborhoods with large Chinese populations out of fear of catching the new virus, despite there being no confirmed cases in New York.
“If I drop off somebody in Flushing [the Queens neighborhood with a Chinese population of some 70,000], I deactivate the app [and drive to another area],” an Uber driver told The Post. “I don’t know who has it. . . . I worry for myself, my family and my passengers.”
A cabbie who asked his name be withheld said he doesn’t “pick up anyone Chinese.
“I feel bad about it, but when I see Chinese passengers, I just go,” he told The Post.
The TLC fines drivers $500 over their first incident of discrimination, with the possibility of their license getting revoked if they continue to discriminate, according to its site.



