On October 2nd, 2009, at approximately 12:15 p.m., a Green and Yellow Cab Company taxi hit me while I was jogging.
In broad daylight.
And then the bastard drove off.
This was actually the second time I’d been hit by a car while on foot, and I was getting sick and tired of it. While using some choice expletives to describe my opinion of the taxi driver’s moral character, driving ability and relationship with his own mother, I read his license place number and repeated it to myself 5 or 6 times, along with his description and cab company (Green and Yellow Cab Company is easy to remember since they have a big honking four-leaf clover logo). A few minutes later, I was on the phone with the police and gave them everything I knew, which was a lot: License, fat old white guy, cab company and cab number.
And then silence. Months of silence. In fact, the Somerville Police Department never got back to me. I followed up on November 4th, leaving a message asking what was the status of my complaint. I think I left another message or two since then, but never, ever, ever heard back from the Boys in Blue.
So I filed a Freedom of Information request using MuckRock (disclosure: I’m a founder and owner of the service) to figure out what the hell had happened. This is what I received:
If you’re a MuckRock member, click through to the page. If you’re not and want to try out the service, get in touch.
I just got off the phone with the Somerville PD to figure out what a disposition of “SERVICED” means, and as I pretty much guessed, it means that the Somerville police let a fat old cab driver off scotch-free after hitting a pedestrian, at a crosswalk, in broad daylight.
Somerville: Where only the strong survive.