BOGUS BOTHER HULL BOXER FINED £600 AFTER
Former boxer Tony Booth has been fined £600 for operating an unlicensed taxi. Humberside Police and Hull City Council have been targeting bogus and unlicensed vehicles following a spate of sexual assaults.
The professional boxer, who once sparred with Joe Calzaghe, was caught using his private hire vehicle in Hull city cen- tre in an area designated for hack- ney carriages.
His cab was not licensed as a hackney carriage and he had no insurance for his Renault Megane Sce- nic when he was stopped by the police in George Street last
BEING CAUGHT DRIVING BOGUS TAXI October.
The 40-year-old has been fined £600 by Hull Magistrates’ Court, ordered to pay a £15 victim surcharge and has been banned from driving for six months.
The council has been cracking down on unli- censed vehicles to protect the public from serious crimes.
Inspector Barry Longstaff, from Hull’s Violent Crime and Licensing Team, told the Hull Daily Mail: “Bogus taxi offences are rare across Hull, but when incidents happen, they can be very serious, some- times leading to sexual assaults. “In Hull, we are lucky to have a large num-
ber of designated taxi ranks where people can wait for hackney carriages and a num- ber of private hire companies in order to get the public home safely.”
The crackdown fol- lows indecent as- saults on women in the city by bogus taxi drivers in the past eight months. Detec- tives are still hunting a sex attacker who posed as a taxi driver and targeted women in incidents in March this year and Novem- ber last year.
They believe a regis- tered sex offender could be behind the events.
Booth has no connec- tion to these incidents.
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COLCHESTER RAPIST REVEALED AS AN ILLEGAL BOGUS DRIVER
A rapist was using his car as an unlicensed taxi when he attacked a woman, it has been revealed.
Abdul Goni, 42, from Colchester, was jailed for five years for an attack on a 24-year-old girl who got into his car in Colchester High Street after a night out. The case has prompt- ed police to renew warnings for women to be careful about using illegal cabs. Police are also still investigating an inci- dent in which two women in their twen- ties were sexually assaulted in Stanway after getting into an unlicensed taxi in the
town centre in May. Supt Darrin Tomkins told the Colchester Daily Gazette: “This court case underlines the need for vigilance. “Work is continuing between the police, the council and taxi firms to ensure Opera- tion Night Owl continues to be a suc- cess.”
The operation has involved uniformed officers offering help to women who appear to be out on the town on their own, who have drunk too much and appear to be vul- nerable.
It was launched in April, after the number of sexual offences
being reported in the town rose sharply. Mr Tomkins said legiti- mate cabs were obliged by law to clearly display their hackney carriage licences, while no other cabs were allowed to pick up fares who had not pre- booked.
He urged lone females to ask to see the dri- ver’s licence before getting into a cab, to go to a rank and only to hail hackney car- riages on the street. Goni originally denied rape, but was sen- tenced at Chelmsford Crown Court after he changed his plea to guilty.
SEX FIEND POSED AS A MANCHESTER CABBIE AND ‘SHOWED NO MERCY’
A predatory rapist dis- guised his car as a taxi to lure a young woman and violently attack her.
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PAGE 28
Amine Kacem, 24, prowled Manchester city centre looking for victims in a car on which he had deliber- ately put a large yellow sticker to make it look like a private hire vehi- cle. The sex attacker, also known as Nazim Hamido, abducted and twice raped the woman after she got in the back of the car on Sackville Street. According to the Man- chester Evening News, Kacem was on his first ever visit to Manchester then calmly drove her back to her hotel. Judge Andrew Blake at Man- chester Crown Court said he believed Kacem had deliberate- ly posed as a taxi driver and put a ‘con- siderable amount of planning’ into the crime.
Jailing Kacem, who buried his head in his
hands, the judge told him: “You targeted the victim, whom plainly you correctly identi- fied as being drunk. You showed her no mercy.”
The victim was left so psychologically scarred she washed herself with bleach after the attack. Kacem fled the country for his native France after the attack.
The court heard how a nationwide appeal to track him down was launched and he returned to Britain months later after his girlfriend begged him to come back.
But Kacem did not hand himself in. Instead, he stole a bundle of banknotes from a customer at a Bureau de Change in London because he thought he needed cash for a lawyer. When he was arrested for that offence, his DNA was taken and he was exposed as a rapist on the run, 18 months after the
attack.
Kacem, of London, was jailed for nine years for the rapes. He claimed he was inno- cent, saying he had consensual sex with the woman and that someone else must have raped her after- wards.
The court heard she had become separat- ed from pals when she was picked up by Kacem in the early hours of March 27, 2009. She told the court that the memory of his vehicle with the large yellow sticker had come to her in a flashback. Neil Fryman, prosecut- ing, said: “She got in the vehicle thinking she was safe.”
Mmmm… So much for Manchester’s com- pletely OTT all-over vehicle stickers for licensed PHVs. It is submitted that anyone can obtain stickers for a vehicle and pose as a PHV driver if they are intent on this sort of crime. – Ed.
PHTM AUGUST 2011
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