Uber Driver Charged with Attempted Murder Had an ‘Extensive Criminal Record’
observer.com
observer.com
Give people a second chance, a few of them screw up, and it's your fault for hiring anyone with a record. Don't give anyone a second chance, and having a criminal record becomes a ticket to lifelong unemployment.
If it was your one friend who got drunk and in a bar fight and charged with assault when he was 20, maybe you'd think differently :)
Even if you restrict your view to felons, in california, for example, there are plenty of assault charges that are easily classifiable into "stupid thing you did once and did not cause long-term harm" but still felonies.
At some point, what folks are really saying is "i'm okay assuming this person is a bad person likely to do something bad". This is, for better or for worse, at this point, pretty unrelated to whether they have a criminal record or not.
> it is a good precaution
Do you have any evidence as to its efficacy?
The widespread abuse of children actually happens though.
Sexual offender registers aim to prevent the loophole widely used by abusers of getting a new job in a different town. (In the case of priests and nuns that move was arranged by their employer).
They also stop some familial abuse. Someone who sexually abused their nieces/nephews would not be able to adopt and would be under greater scrutiny from child protective social services when they move to a new area.
Based on what evidence?
Let's say that something bad happens and they assault a client or whatever.
Client finds out they have priors. Asks you if you think you made a wise choise, or if you'd change something in your hiring process.
What would your answer be?
Without that data, i can't really say anything at all.
Every piece of research i've ever seen basically says "intuition is wrong here, they don't actually assault people at a higher rate".
IE people who repeatedly are arrested for dealing drugs are not likely to have a higher rate of assaulting people while driving ubers.
But, again, i'm data driven on this, if we have data/research, and the scientific consensus is that they are worse, and significantly worse, than yeah, maybe it's worth doing something.
From what i know, most of this is driven by gut feelings and politics, and not actual data.
And another one a bit more provocative :D
You alleged above that your parent commenter would think differently if the driver was a friend of theirs.
If the passenger/client was a friend of yours and you knew the driver had priors, would you advise them against getting into the car or not?
...doesn't have a felony record, even if he was convicted, because simple assault is a misdemeanor charge. The cases really aren't parallel.
(The rest of this comment seemed general enough to promote to top level: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11780434)
And you know what? If I'm sending my kid on something like Shuddle,
http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/15/shuddle-ride-sharing-serv...
I don't want the driver to have ever been in a bar fight ever.
And for what it's worth, I do have a friend who got in a fist fight in a grocery store parking lot in college. It's certainly not damnation and I think he paid his debt, but I also think that incident accurately reflects on his character. He's a good guy most of the time, but I don't want him driving my grandmother around.
Depends on the crime, right? I don't particularly care if my taxi driver embezzled $500k from his employer, or if my daycare provider stole a car when she was 23.
Ok with the first example, definitely not OK with the second. Car theft is a pretty serious crime which oftentimes is correlated with other violent crime.
Young person A (23) drives friends home in friends (person B) car after a party as a designated driver. Parents of person B (who own the car) don't like person A and claim it's theft (even though they got the car back with no issues). Person A gets grand theft on his record. because A couldn't afford decent lawyer.
Maybe this is contrived - I don't know - I can think of a lot of things that are equivalent to "grand theft auto" but no actual harm was done except for a few miles on the car.
If the point is punishment, well, the reoffense rate for those prisoners that never are put into rehabilitation programs is 67% after 3 years, and 75% after 5 years.
http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welco...
So i'm going to suggest that unless we have a scheme for warehousing large numbers of people pretty much forever, and supporting them, we literally have to do something different.
Well, there's always the prison system.
(With that said, I agree that there's a lot of contradiction in the hive mind. One day, people are like, "How horrible to turn someone down merely because of a crime they already paid their debt on!" And the next day, "Wait, the bad driver had one time been suspected of a felony? How was he allowed to see sunlight in the first place?!")
Why pulls and such are so damn hard to get right. Just the way the question is asked will get a change in response. And that is on top of the issues of race, class, and whatsnot that you want to get a representative mix of to get as objective a result as possible.
Criminal records are not really public, but you can get your personal criminal records easily from the police and it will cost quite some money. Some employers will ask for it, but they're only allowed to if they have a good reason for it (e.g. handling confidential information, etc.). After some time (5-20 years depending on the crime) crimes will be removed from your criminal records again.
Most employers won't ask for your criminal records so you simply have to find such a job. For driving people around commercially you need a special driver's license. Your criminal records will get checked as a part of that driver's license.
Our CDL system is really restrictive to the point where it can be a serious PITA since state laws tend to vary a lot in terms of what's a misdemeanor. Towing an unregistered car/trailer in Maine is a misdemeanor, in Vermont it's legal under some circumstances, some States don't even require registration on small enough trailers. Taking someone else's junk to the scrap yard for a few bucks could be the end of your CDL. In Virginia 15 over is a misdemeanor and having an out of state plate would paint a target on you. Traffic flow on most highways is 15-over at times.
Obviously many people manage to get and hold CDLs but a zero tolerance based system does have its flaws.
A basic criminal records check costs ~$20 here FWIW
How about this question: Are people with records as a direct result of performing services for Uber simply unhireable by Uber?
Example: In Miami, Uber/Lyft drivers are issued citations for violating various municipal ordinances (i.e. for-hire; chauffeur violation) which carry a maximum of $1,010 fine and/or 45 days county jail per violation.
Uber provides drivers with a lawyer, represents they will reimburse the fines and even provides training on how to avoid getting citations. However, after sometime Uber also fires these drivers/stops send them rides.
A food-worker who has been convicted of poisoning food ought to be able to be blocked from food-working. But a food-worker who's been convicted of wreckless driving would not be blocked from food-working.
Second chance within reason.
After filing a court injunction against Uber, part of which insisted Uber do background checks on it's drivers, the city sent some people with bad records to apply as Uber drivers to see if they could get through, and if course, Ubers claim to background checks turned out to be BS. Uber was discovered to have contracted registered sex offenders and drivers with violent criminal histories.
(Talk of background checks begins at 5:50)
"He/she has a criminal record" is too often the end of consideration for any position and it's really sad.
Edit: Not saying that Uber shouldn't background check, they should. I only meant what I said, nothing more. I don't work for Uber.
But stating that you do background checks, and then definitely not doing them at all is the problem the op talked about.
Men would probably take the first option if you lower the cost to ride with felons.
I guess you could also lie to people about doing the checks, later say "Most people who rode with convicted felons didn't get violently murdered", and people would pull out their spreadsheets and conclude that the problem isn't worth worrying about. Then the problem would go away.
How on earth are you able to make the jump from Uber driver to every job on the planet?
I don't know if Uber is lying or incompetent, but this seems like a clear example where they failed to do what they promised.
All the discussion around whether they should do background checks seems to me to be beside the point. Part of the recent court settlements was to rename the "Safe Driver" fee to a "booking fee" because the money wasn't actually being used to ensure you were getting a "safer driver".
The fact that an Uber driver killed someone does not mean anything about Uber drivers. The fact that this person drove for Uber is completely incidental to their behavior. The idea that we need to start imposing regulations to 'solve' this complete non-problem is staggeringly stupid.
If this were actually a problem, and people actually cared about this, then Lyft would start doing extensive background checks and everyone would switch. But they don't. Instead they ask the government to impose regulation generalizing from the fear of isolated incidents.
Nobody asks the only question that actually matters: Does being an Uber driver make a violent criminal more likely to commit a violent crime? If the answer is 'no', then the only reason for sanitizing Uber drivers is to avoid these people committing crimes outside their own neighborhoods, with all of the racial and socioeconomic implications that has.
The soccer-momification (let's define that precisely as acts of security theater: the TSA, licensure of taxi drivers, licensure of hair stylists, etc..) of business is a profound drag on our economy and society, and more likely than not creates more violent crime by preventing criminals from pulling themselves up out of poverty.
The actual question: should a person who is more likely to commit a violent crime be allowed to hold any job?
No, it's not. Uber is directly responsible for the people it allows on it's platform. As such, they should be doing everything they can to make sure those people they allow on their platform are not going to be doing things like this.
"The soccer-momification"
That's when I knew you don't need to be taken seriously.
Sure, if an employee cuts corners to save the company money and earn a promotion, yes, that's the company's fault. But if a teller shoots some guy that walks in, is that really the bank's fault?
They dispatched the driver to the person.
"Why should a company be responsible for the criminal behavior of its employees, when those employees are not acting in the interest of the company?"
Because they're still acting on behalf of the company.
What does this suggest? That arguments in absolute terms on either side are wrong. Which further suggests that there is some balance to be struck between responsibility and efficiency - between negative externalities and economic productivity.
The litmus test that I posit makes sense here is one of two things:
- High-impact correlated risk
- Inability of the market to compensate for the issue (due to informational asymmetries or agency problems, say)
I don't think uber meets either of these standards. Certainly there is no high-impact correlated risk. Which leaves inability of the market to provide this safety net. Pretty clearly, an Uber competitor could emerge that advertises the thoroughness of its background checks, and charges a premium for this service. If people want it, they'll use it. If they don't, it'll die. There is no need for the government to step in here.
I am not in general a fan of security theater, but I think that doing thorough background checks of for-hire drivers for relevant offenses such as moving violations, alcohol- or drug-related arrests and violent crimes is just smart.
This is something that the market should be able to solve extremely well on its own, without intervention from government. And there is no large correlated risk here or dearth of information for the public that should motivate the regulators to act.
That's completely the wrong way to think about this. The real question is, should people who have been convicted of violent crimes be given jobs that puts them in a position of power over other people? Make no mistake, that's exactly what being an Uber driver is. Drivers are in a private 1-on-1 situation with customers where the driver has all of the power. The customer is literally putting their life into the driver's hands.
The only jobs that don't put you in some kind of position of power in our society are ultra low skilled minimum wage jobs, and even many of those give you some kind of power. It is unreasonable to exclude people from all of these jobs, so it makes sense to exclude them only from jobs where that power dynamic is particularly extreme, and I don't think driving an Uber qualifies.
a) Kill them. First thing they do is check his phone logs. Oh, he called an Uber? Let's talk to that driver.
b) Rob/rape/etc them. Uber has perfect records of the identity of their drivers and who got in which car. You will be caught or at the very least banned from receiving fares instantly.
These harms are completely self-limiting. You get one shot at a crime, at best.
Government can't stop all crimes, therefore we shouldn't even make the slightest effort to check if there's a reasonable chance somebody put into a position of power over others is likely to commit violent crimes? That's utter nonsense.
- Imposes an enormous regulatory burden and cost on companies, which they then pass on to consumers and use as a moat against competition
- Excludes tons of ex-convicts who are perfectly capable of doing the job from doing it and thereby increases their likelihood of reoffending.
This isn't a case of "oh we can reduce violent crime in exchange for nothing". There is no free lunch. There are very real, very significant costs to implementing a law like this. And the simple fact of the matter is that those costs overwhelmingly outweigh the benefits in this particular case.
The number of crimes that would be prevented is tiny. The social and economic cost is huge.
Well yes, that's the whole point. Exclude the people who committed certain classes of crimes from being drivers. They can go get other jobs that don't have the same opportunistic crime risk. I'm not advocating for the idea that every single crime, no matter what, would exclude you, I'm just saying that certain classes of crimes, including violent crimes and sexual assault, definitely mean you shouldn't be an Uber driver.
> The number of crimes that would be prevented is tiny.
Statement not backed up by evidence.
> The social and economic cost is huge.
Neither is this. Certainly, doing background checks is a cost that Uber would have to pay, but it's a far cry from saying that this cost is "huge" or implying it's a burden on everybody. As for social cost, I don't even understand what you're claiming the social cost is. There's a huge social cost when people don't feel like it's safe for them to get into an Uber alone. There's very little social cost to saying that certain types of criminals cannot be Uber drivers.
Excluding these people from jobs imposes an economic cost on society. One which, imo, outweighs the benefits of keeping them out of this position of power.
> Statement not backed up by evidence.
Ah, indeed it is not. But I am proposing that we do nothing, and that places the burden of proof squarely upon those who propose intervention.
But either way, you do not dispute that any violence is self-limiting, and surely you do not dispute that if the market demands a 'safer' alternative, one will emerge. So i'm really not sure what the argument is for government stepping in.
> Neither is this. Certainly, doing background checks is a cost that Uber would have to pay, but it's a far cry from saying that this cost is "huge" or implying it's a burden on everybody.
No. That's not how economics works. Uber doesn't pay the cost, people that use Uber do. And regulation like this actually cements Uber's dominance in the market place, because it creates a barrier to new entrants. If you are a 60 billion dollar company, spending 10 million a year on compliance is no big deal. If you are a startup, it will kill you. That is the true cost of this sort of regulation.
Take a look at the taxi industry. The taxi industry is terrible precisely because of this sort of regulation protecting incumbents by keeping out new entrants. Anyone looking to start a taxi business needs to buy medallions which cost approximately a million dollars each (before Uber showing up made them virtually worthless).
> As for social cost, I don't even understand what you're claiming the social cost is. There's a huge social cost when people don't feel like it's safe for them to get into an Uber alone. There's very little social cost to saying that certain types of criminals cannot be Uber drivers.
If that were indeed true that people didn't feel safe getting in an Uber, then they wouldn't want to ride in an Uber. Uber's ridership would drop and they would feel compelled to do something about it - all on their own.
I absolutely dispute that! There's a pretty large barrier to entry in the existing market already (network effect is pretty significant for this market), and a new entrant that's doing full background checks while nobody else is is not going to be able to compete with the already extremely aggressive pricing the existing players are using.
> So i'm really not sure what the argument is for government stepping in.
For the public good! You're being intentionally obtuse here. You're ignoring the arguments in favor, choosing to respond to a few specific sentences with claims of huge economic and social cost with no evidence, and then pretending that you've addressed the argument. You haven't.
Also, if you think this is a case of the government stepping in where they haven't before, you're completely wrong. Licensed cab drivers already get background checks, generally including fingerprints[1]. As Uber and Lyft and others replace licensed taxis, we're losing regulation. If you're so dead set against background checks, why weren't you complaining about taxi companies before Uber came along?
[1] I checked my local laws and they definitely do background checks, and this article says that taxi licensing commissions typically use a service called Live Scan that uses fingerprints: http://www.fastcompany.com/3050172/tech-forecast/the-truth-a...
> Uber doesn't pay the cost, people that use Uber do.
Not really. Uber and Lyft already drove prices extremely low, both in an attempt to undercut each other and to undercut taxis. If they raise prices they'll start to lose business back to the taxi companies and elsewhere. Uber at least would likely just absorb the cost for now while they continue to try and achieve market dominance. And if they ever do achieve market dominance, you know they're going to raise their prices regardless of whether or not they're doing background checks.
> And regulation like this actually cements Uber's dominance in the market place, because it creates a barrier to new entrants. If you are a 60 billion dollar company, spending 10 million a year on compliance is no big deal. If you are a startup, it will kill you. That is the true cost of this sort of regulation.
Bullshit. If you're a startup, you're not paying 10 million a year on compliance. The cost for background checks scales linearly with the number of people being checked, so a startup that has a small fleet is going to pay significantly less than Uber. Besides, any new entrant to the carpooling market is going to have to be backed by serious money already to even get a toehold, adding background checks isn't going to change that.
> Take a look at the taxi industry. The taxi industry is terrible precisely because of this sort of regulation protecting incumbents by keeping out new entrants. Anyone looking to start a taxi business needs to buy medallions which cost approximately a million dollars each (before Uber showing up made them virtually worthless).
The taxi industry is not terrible because of background checks. That's a ridiculous claim. Equating doing background checks with the medallion system also makes no sense at all. You seem to be assuming that all forms of government regulation are identical and therefore any regulation that seems bad means all regulation is bad, and that's nonsense.
> If that were indeed true that people didn't feel safe getting in an Uber, then they wouldn't want to ride in an Uber. Uber's ridership would drop and they would feel compelled to do something about it - all on their own.
No they wouldn't, because there's no competitor that's any better. The taxi industry is not doing its job well, which is precisely why Uber and Lyft and others were able to work. And AFAIK none of the carpooling companies do fingerprint background checks. So what this means is that someone who doesn't feel safe getting into an Uber late at night also won't feel safe getting into a Lyft, or a car from any other company in this market that still exists.
That is my point. The plan will not work because it will cost too much and people won't opt into it. Do you know what that says? That they don't care, because the risk is negligible. Or they will care, and they will pay the premium.
> Also, if you think this is a case of the government stepping in where they haven't before, you're completely wrong. Licensed cab drivers already get background checks, generally including fingerprints[1]. As Uber and Lyft and others replace licensed taxis, we're losing regulation. If you're so dead set against background checks, why weren't you complaining about taxi companies before Uber came along?
Taxis are precisely my point. Regulation creates stagnation and favors incumbents. Taxis suck, regulation is a big reason why.
> Not really. Uber and Lyft already drove prices extremely low, both in an attempt to undercut each other and to undercut taxis. If they raise prices they'll start to lose business back to the taxi companies and elsewhere. Uber at least would likely just absorb the cost for now while they continue to try and achieve market dominance. And if they ever do achieve market dominance, you know they're going to raise their prices regardless of whether or not they're doing background checks.
That is a temporary measure. You can't spend at a deficit forever. Eventually the cost gets passed on to consumers or they go out of business. It is that simple.
> Bullshit. If you're a startup, you're not paying 10 million a year on compliance. The cost for background checks scales linearly with the number of people being checked, so a startup that has a small fleet is going to pay significantly less than Uber. Besides, any new entrant to the carpooling market is going to have to be backed by serious money already to even get a toehold, adding background checks isn't going to change that.
There are fixed costs to setting up procedures for doing background checks. The costs do scale linearly plus a constant factor. That constant factor is negligible for Uber but may not be for startups.
> The taxi industry is not terrible because of background checks. That's a ridiculous claim. Equating doing background checks with the medallion system also makes no sense at all. You seem to be assuming that all forms of government regulation are identical and therefore any regulation that seems bad means all regulation is bad, and that's nonsense.
The taxi industry is not terrible because of background checks alone. It is terrible because the government licenses taxi drivers and artificially limits their supply.
>No they wouldn't, because there's no competitor that's any better.
I posited the existence of a competitor that is 'better' along this axis. If people care, they'll switch and they'll do so at a premium that corresponds to the strength of that care.
In five minutes or so on the Maryland state district courts' website, we discover that Hemming has considerable form [1], mostly around unlawful possession of controlled substances and prescription forgery, although there is a domestic abuse prosecution which doesn't appear to have gone to trial [2], probably because it was treated as mutual combat [3] and both parties chose to drop charges.
Would you feel safe in a car with this man?
Would you trust this man to drive a car for your hire service?
Would you consider it unreasonable to expect five minutes' due diligence of Uber?
[1] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquirySearc....
[2] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai....
[3] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai....
...well, you're braver than I am, that's for sure.
Brands exist for this very reason: so the consumer can choose to trust / not trust the brand at large based on their past experiences with the brand, which are of course influenced by hiring practices, among other things. It is a trust by proxy if you will, and it is the more critical for unsupervised "employees".
If Uber wants to build a trustworthy brand, it is up to Uber to 1. Define their hiring standards and practices loudly, transparently and clearly (like every other large company does) and 2. Enforce them consistently
As it stands right now, (and you may feel differently) I am not the kind of consumer that would do business with a company that leaves it up to the consumer to figure out whether their employees are violent criminals or not.
Every. day.
> [...] just three days ago, we reported on a driver who was arrested for strangling a college student in a dorm parking lot.
Three days ago...
> A month ago, a Hawaii Uber driver was arrested for raping a teenage passenger.
Over a month ago.
But every day!
I see he was also wearing his pants of holding +1, great journalism guys.
I totally agree that the language came off as alarmist but find it amusing that you're alarmist in your response.
How am I being alarmist? Be specific.
Fingerprints are the standard way of preventing falsified identity in criminal background checks. Just what Uber and Lyft insist are useless would have prevented Hemming's hiring, most likely.
Funny that a lot of cities are insisting on "useless" fingerprint checks now, isn't it.