A San Francisco cab official famous for his tirades against ride-share services stepped down yesterday, after a series of offensive videos surfaced from his private YouTube channel.
The videos, which bore titles like "Smack Dat Ass" and "Stupid Bitches," feature Johnson slapping the buttocks of a female passenger, relating a vulgar story about a drunk man picking up a transexual hooker, and chiding seven inebriated women as they crowd into his 4-seater taxi.
They were leaked in an email to the Chronicle and various other news outlets, as well as the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates rideshares and other transit services.
Johnson says the videos were supposed to be private, and that he'd made them to demonstrate the new taxi video cameras to friends in law enforcement. "I picked the three funniest videos from an otherwise boring Saturday night," he told SF Weekly, adding that the ass-slapping was consensual.
Johnson believes the whistle-blower who leaked the videos is a ride-share mole "trying to use this as evidence that all cab drivers are misogynistic assholes." He says he intends to take legal action once he confirms that person's identity. Johnson's complaint, apparently, is that the person passed along publicly available content to journalists who proceeded to document it.
The whistle-blower has yet to return SF Weekly's requests for comment. Meanwhile, the videos have vanished from Johnson's YouTube page.
This isn't the first time Johnson, who still works for the Cab Drivers Association but no longer serves on its board, has found himself in hot water. A commenter to another SF Weekly blog post also accuses him of rampant homophobia -- a charge that Johnson denies.
"I'm certainly not homophobic," he insists. "I have a large number of my friends are gay ... I'm in full 100 percent support of LGBT rights." And, he says, he'll pursue a libel suit against that guy, too.
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