Cabbies

Annapolis taxi drivers and owners will challenge a new mandatory drug-testing policy passed by the City Council last week.Jody Buccellato, attorney for the Annapolis City Taxicab Association, which was formed this month in response to the drug-testing proposal, said he will soon challenge the law's constitutionality and fairness in Circuit Court.He said the court could rule on the appeal within a few months.Buccellato said the law is unconstitutional because -- unlike the city's testing of firefighters and police officers -- the plan doesn'tspecify which test to take and makes drivers and owners bear the expense.

Know a good seafood restaurant? Ask a city cabdriver and he's apt to answer Blue Sea Grill at 614 Water St. Big Steaks Management, which owns the Blue Sea Grill and several other restaurants around town, recently created a rewards program that will pay cabdrivers for referring customers to the restaurant. Under the program, drivers will receive $50 for every 30 guests that they refer to the restaurant. The program is similar to one that Big Steaks has with local hotels, where it rewards the concierge services for referring guests to its restaurants.

City homicide detectives are investigating possible links between the recent deaths of two men believed to be unlicensed taxi cab drivers, sources said. The shootings took place over the course of four days last week and within about a half-mile in East Baltimore. Police believe the victims - ages 63 and 78 - were "hacks," or unlicensed cab drivers, though it is unclear whether they were transporting or seeking passengers at the time they were killed, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. The latest occurred Saturday, when Calvin Hayes, 78, was found about 6:50 a.m. sitting inside a blue Cadillac suffering from gunshot wounds to the upper torso.

Fellow cabbies rallied yesterday to the cause of a Royal Cab Co. driver jailed in the shooting of a teen-ager who allegedly robbed him Monday of $69 in West Baltimore."

Annapolis cab drivers didn't find much to like last night about a proposed law that would require them to take blood tests.Some drivers said they wouldn't mind taking the test, but objected to a clause that would require them to pay for it.Others objected to the legislation on constitutional grounds."

The Annapolis City Council's Rules Committee will vote on bills tonight that would give city department heads job security and require cab drivers to take drug tests.The bill to protect department directors was proposed by Alderman Ellen O. Moyer, D-Ward 8. Most department heads can be dismissed by the mayor without cause; under Moyer's bill, department heads could be removed only for official misconduct, conviction of a crime or poor performance.Mayor Alfred A. Hopkins opposes Moyer's proposal.

WESTMINSTER -- Leroy M. Turnbaugh refused to comment Tuesday on why he failed to keep an appointment with the City Council Monday night to discuss his application to open a taxi service.Nor would he say whether he is planning to withdraw his application, as he did with a similar application he submitted to the city government about 18 months ago.Turnbaugh faced potential opposition to his application from a woman who told the council at its June 1 meeting that he abruptly closed a taxi service he operated briefly in Hanover, Pa., several years ago.Turnbaugh, a Finksburg resident, is a former driver for Hughes Trash Removal.

Thaddeus Logan figures he's driven more than a million miles in the last decade and a half, most of it without ever leaving the Baltimore City limits.He's a cabbie who's driven a collection of people ranging from executives doing million-dollar deals to hookers at midnight to kids headed for school to old folks needing medical help, fast.The Northwood resident is 48, a West Baltimore kid, graduate of both Douglass High School and the University of Maryland, ex-Baltimore vice squad cop and ex-salesman -- and always an )

A Baltimore man pleaded guilty Tuesday and received life plus 20 years in jail for killing a Sun Cab driver during a robbery, prosecutors said yesterday.James Robinson, 23, and his girlfriend, Laverne Paulette Jackson, were passengers in the cab of Frederick Griffin on Oct. 8. Mr. Griffin, 44, was shot four times in the back after being ordered to pull into a parking lot in the 5000 block of Denview Way in Northeast Baltimore.Robinson, of the 2000 block of E. Hoffman St., pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and use of a handgun in a crime of violence.