A Harlem lawyer claims the Taxi & Limousine Commission threatened to bust her for acting as an illegal cab service when she dropped her nanny off at LaGuardia Airport.
Maria Victoria Bayoneto — a 52-year-old single mom — said she was the victim of racial profiling when TLC agents used “intimidation tactics” and surrounded her car before making the unfounded accusations.
“They were very firm,” the corporate lawyer, a native of the Philippines, told The Post on Sunday.
“They just kept asking the same thing, even though I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ “
Bayoneto then said the agents gave her an ultimatum.
“After a while [one agent] said, ‘We can do this one of two ways,’ ” she explained about the June 8 standoff.
“‘One, we can do it the easy way: You give us your ID and tell us why you need it, or two will be harder.’ And I said, ‘Look, I’m just a mom dropping off the nanny.’ “
She said at one point as many as a half-dozen plain clothes cops surrounded her, “harassing me, intimidating me, showing me handcuffs.”
She added: “They were around my car and they had my registration, so I couldn’t leave at that point.”
TLC officers are unarmed and not affiliated with the NYPD.
The stunned attorney said she’s since filed a complaint with the city through 311 and reached out to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office to report the unnecessary encounter.
She told The Post she’s also weighing legal action against the agency.
Bayoneto said the ugly scene unfolded when she got back in her car and a woman knocked on her car window, asking, “Are you available for a ride?”
“And I was very puzzled, like, what are you saying? Then I’m like, ‘Wait. I’m not an Uber or Lyft driver.’ And she said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, okay,'” she said. “And then I think I saw her nodding toward some people.
“And then I turned around and there were two men in plainclothes knocking on my window,” she recalled. “And they said, ‘Can we see your registration and your driver’s license?’ ‘Why?’ And they just repeated the question and I said, ‘Why? Why do you need it? What did I do?'”
Bayoneto said she was eventually allowed to go — but has been steaming ever since.
“They had absolutely no reasonable grounds for it,” she fumed. “I think my constitutional rights were violated, and I think I was racially profiled.
“I think I was racially profiled because none of my friends who are white would probably be stopped at the airport to suspect they would be a driver,” she said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with being a TLC driver but I gave no indication.”
A TLC spokesperson said the agency is investigating.
