Uber stopped its own investigators from reporting crimes to the police

> “At the end of the day, we’re not the judge and jury to determine whether a crime has occurred,” Tracey Breeden, Uber’s global head of women’s safety, told the Post. “We’re here to gather information, make a business decision. We’re not law enforcement.”

All the more reason to give what you have to the actual law enforcement and let them determine if a crime has occurred.

They are literally choosing to make more money by allowing crimes to not be prosecuted. How can anyone who is part of this sleep at night?

>The investigators are also allegedly instructed to “first to protect Uber” and make sure it is “not held liable” for any crimes that are committed by people using the company’s ride-hailing platform.

This doesn't seem much different than say interacting with HR inside your own company or anything like that.

Still a bad look and morally questionable, but at the same time I do agree that the victim can / should go to the police if they wish to.

If Uber did go to the police I wonder what guidelines there would be. Only if there is a confession? "Enough" evidence? Or just any accusation?

I can imagine a situation where a victim doesn't want to go to the police, and that is their call. I'm not sure it is Urber's job to do it for them.

Of course not. The team exists specifically to avoid police (and then at one point, press) involvement.

It's like sports teams that have their own anti-doping initiatives - not to catch cheaters, but to catch them before the authorities can and sink you.

Not sure why we don't refer to the original reporting from which this was based:

"When rides go wrong: How Uber’s investigations unit works to limit the company’s liability"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/25/ubers-i...

> Uber told the Post that it’s “the victim’s choice to report an incident to police,” a position the company tells The Verge it arrived at after consulting experts. That said, the company has started giving people the “option to allow [Uber] to contact law enforcement on their behalf”

This is a reasonable policy and this sentence completely desensationalizes the premise of the article

I'm watching a case on a personal basis right now. A friend of mine was raped at gunpoint by an Uber driver, who was stalking her neighborhood looking for her the next day. And NOLA cops aren't exactly helpful to the poorer residents there... "911 Is a Joke" indeed.

We'll see what Uber does. The thing is, they own a device that tracks the driver's movements. They know who he picked up, and where, and if the car stopped, and where. That's a lot of evidence to hand to police.

> The special investigations team inside Uber [..] is not allowed to [..] file official police reports “even when they get confessions of felonies,”

One step above "snitches get stitches". Are such contracts/instructions even remotely legal?

Edit: By legal, I don't mean enforceable. Rather, I mean isn't giving such an instruction itself a criminal act?

I feel a war of the hiveminds coming on.

"Never ever ever ever talk to police, they're pure evil and there cannot ever be some conceivable benefit to doing so."

'Why, oh why, didn't Uber report everything to the police?'

People who sympathize with both mentalities, what are your thoughts on distinguishing the cases here?

> the company has started giving people the “option to allow [Uber] to contact law enforcement on their behalf” if the customer is reporting an incident that may be a crime, according to the Post.

My next web search will concern corporate psychology, and studies that explore the mindsets employees within an organization adopt resulting from the influence of leadership. These mindsets inevitably leak out into society, and are evident in the defenses offered to the indefensible behavior described in the article. Of course, there is nothing illegal here in that apparently customers are allowed the option of reporting the crimes themselves, however when you consider that perhaps there was not so subtle manipulation from investigators which may have discouraged such reports (the careful wording described, though following certain lines, indicates no boundary that can't be crossed to protect the organization), the situation clearly describes a bit of an ethical crisis. To attempt to paint it as commonplace in other organizations does an egregious disservice to the majority of companies that carry out business honorably everyday. This is only another example of tech organizations that sprung up without mature business people to run them and more budget than anything which grow much faster than is healthy and end up doing anything to survive. This trend will unfortunately continue as the concept of value and profitability continues to lose definition in our economy.

The gall! Do they think they are a University Title IX Office or something?

Doesn't give me much hope for the future of Uber. Which crimes will not be reported by Uber? Where will they draw the line? Murder? Rape?

Remember when Uber disabled the emergency braking system in an autonomous vehicle and killed a person?

They're not an ethical company. They think it's acceptable to put dangerous, unproven technology in the hands of teenagers and subsequently killed a person that a normal human driver would not have hit.

While uber is a shifty as hell company at best I am not sure if they are wrong here without any mandated reporter requirements.

While it is a bad look one "oops" from something that looks bad could cause harm to an innocent party for what victimized parties usually report already. That could rightfully lead to them being at fault in a multimillion dollar lawsuit and even worse headlines like "Uber got kids taken away from Gold Star father". Seems shitty but the right thing to do at scale.