Juneau Taxi Cab

Feds are looking at the New Orleans Taxi Cab office.

Feds are looking into the city's hard-fought Ground Transportation bureau after a April bribe-scandal in which an office worker and a United Cab Co. executive were detained for corruption, followed by rapid "emergency" closures of three other office workers - two of whom had examined the bribe case.

Confederation participation came to the fore this past weekend in a seperate lawsuit against a detained taxi cabbie. Orleans Parish followers had tried to find out notes and testimonies from the office and taxi firms to present other sexual grievances against Hamdalla, 27, at Attempt. However, they came across a blockade with the town and an office detective, Wilton Joiner.

"Hamdallas defender John Hall Thomas said, "We were said that the problem of getting notes from the taxi office has to do with a nationwide inquiry. U.S. District Attorney Jim Letten said he could not corroborate or disavow that an inquiry was underway by referring to U.S. Federal Legislation. Tribunal Judge Camille Buras scheduled a hearings for today on a request to force the Municipal Prosecutor to turn over papers, and she issued summonses for United Cabins and Liberty Bell Cabin to turn over any complaints or inquiry notes for Hamdalla.

Wherever Joiner would fit into a federale spacecraft was not known. Joie Cutrer, the office worker on suspension. The Times-Picayune was provided with an audiotape by Cutrer in which Donald "Cornbread" Juneau, a United Cab vice-president, told a dispatching clerk to tell the company's taxi drivers to go to the Old Gentilly Road municipal control center in no time because "Big Will" works.

Cutter said Juneau referred to Joiner as a taxi cab supervisor who would ignore injuries. "Juneau says, the man is here now," at one point in the film. Following an in-house inquiry, on April 12, Juneau PD and taxi cabin expert Ronnie Blake apprehended Juneau and detained Ronnie Blake for taking part in an allegation of fraudulent deception of inspectors' decals in which Blake supposedly accepted payoffs in return for a pile of decals attesting that cabs had passed city inspections.

Blake, 51, a taxi inspector for the town, was charged with a felony in the offi ce and fake official logs. Juneau, 64, was posted with the submission or keeping of bogus government record. Mayor Mitch Landrieu's Cutrer and two others - colleague Travis Trahan and head of Michael Lentz's offices - were on suspension for 120 workingdays after the arrest, awaiting an inquiry into wage scams.

Mr Cutrer named the move retaliation for making remarks to the Times-Picayune this week, in which he struck Landrieu's assistant administrator, Ann Duplessis, and said she was blocking an offer to disciplin two other office workers. Landrieu's top assistant, Andy Kopplin, said the town had waited for Juneau and Blake to be arrested before taking legal steps against Cutrer and Trahan for "irregularities in timekeeping".

"A Lentz lawyer said his mandate, a former NOPD official, was recruited in 2008 to eliminate long-standing corrupt practices in the firm. However, other clerks were sentenced for taking a bribe for braking plates and reselling illicit driving licences.

Lentz headed the inquiry that led to the detentions last month, said his lawyer, Donovan Livaccari. On April 14 Lentz was released free of charge for "negligent supervision", according to a stay of execution note in which the Department of Safety and Permits Director Paul May charged him with not ensuring that Trahan and Cutrer presented precise time sheets and dropped the bullet on a covert inspection that began in 2009.

"There were some outstanding deals that remained incomplete because they were abandoned," he said. The Times-Picayune provided Cutrer with an sworn statement by Jonas Foreman, a former United Cab chairman, who vowed to take the daily "tip" from Kewana Fortune, who handles taxi papers at City Hall. The Fortune and Joiner are the two staff members who, according to Cutrer Duplessis, are immune from discipline.

Tilting is one of several studies that the city's general supervisor initiated in mid-April, said Howard Schwartz, first deputy general supervisor for studies. Cutrer's retaliatory claims will also be examined by the inspector's bureau. Said the town was " fully cooperative."

" Downtown also handed over his inquiry into the three office workers to the OIG, said Ryan Berni, a Landrieu spokesperson. Berni said that no other office staff had been temporarily dismissed since then. The Assistant District Attorney Christopher Bowman, spokesperson for District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, refused to talk about the case or acknowledge that a U.S. government inquiry stopped him on Wednesday.

Issues emerged as to how he had succeeded in retaining his taxi licence after several detentions, among them a 2007 road shoot that led to four counts of attempt at homicide in St. Charles Parish, for supposedly firing through his cabin windows at an S. U. V. with two grown-ups and two kids inside. This indictment is still open, said Thomas, Hamdalla's solicitor.

And Hamdalla also had to face a Earl of Orleans who had been severely attacked in 2006, but the public prosecutor's department of Orleans municipality rejected it, as the judicial file shows. Thompson said municipal data shows that a taxi company clerk Hamdalla issued a new driver's license in 2008 refusing to drive on the basis of his bust file, which also contained an arrest charge of fraudulent use of a bank account.