In February, Terry Harman, an assistant district legal professional for Santa Clara County in California, wrote a memo detailing her considerations about sexual assaults on Uber rides.
The memo she despatched to her boss, District Lawyer Jeff Rosen, stated that though their workplace prosecuted a number of hundred sexual assault circumstances annually, just one had concerned an Uber driver.
Primarily based on information launched by Uber, she estimated that riders in Santa Clara County had reported as many as 60 sexual assault incidents to the corporate in 2017 and 2018 alone.
“Uber receives a criticism, investigates the criticism, makes a discovering and handles stated discovering internally and privately,” Ms. Harman stated. “Uber has primarily carved out its personal justice system.”
Within the months since, Ms. Harman and different native officers, together with Sam Liccardo, the mayor of San Jose, have repeatedly met with Uber, hoping to persuade the corporate to report sexual assault incidents to regulation enforcement, if solely on a trial foundation. However Uber has declined, native officers stated, arguing that the victims ought to management when and the best way to disclose their experiences.
The deadlock is a component of a bigger battle over the best way Uber and different ride-hailing corporations deal with reviews of sexual assault. Lately, each Uber and Lyft have launched information revealing the variety of assault and harassment incidents reported to the corporate. The 2 corporations have additionally began sharing information about harmful drivers with one another. However some consider the businesses ought to go additional.
Over the previous decade, some sexual assault survivors have filed lawsuits in opposition to the massive ride-hailing corporations, claiming they’ve failed to guard riders. Since September 2021, a minimum of 40 girls have filed such fits in opposition to Uber. In August, 13 others sued Lyft. All are within the preliminary phases and have but to go to trial.
In 2019, the California Public Utilities Fee, or C.P.U.C., ordered Uber to supply extra detailed details about sexual assault incidents on Uber rides, together with the names of any witnesses. When Uber did not comply, the state fined the corporate $59 million. Uber later settled the case for greater than $9 million.
Now, the Santa Clara district legal professional’s workplace and the mayor of San Jose are arguing that Uber — and different ride-hailing corporations — ought to report all such incidents to the authorities in order that they are often formally investigated. This, they consider, is important to sustaining public security. Individuals who assault a rider in an Uber automotive, they argue, could also be kicked off the service, however that won’t forestall them from assaulting somebody in different conditions.
“We simply need Uber to name the police and let the police examine,” Mr. Rosen stated throughout a current interview at his workplace in San Jose. “The sufferer might or might not need to speak to the police — and that’s nice. However Uber must allow us to clarify to the sufferer what their choices are.”
In December 2019, Uber launched its first “security transparency report,” revealing that it had obtained almost 6,000 reviews of sexual assault on Uber rides in 2017 and 2018. Greater than 1,240 of these complaints had been made in California, in keeping with numbers launched by C.P.U.C.
Contemplating that Santa Clara County represents 5 p.c of the state’s inhabitants, the district legal professional’s workplace estimated that 62 assaults occurred within the county throughout that two-year stretch. However just one incident was reported to the police.
Uber declined to debate the estimate. The determine might embody incidents that the district legal professional wouldn’t prosecute.
This previous spring, the district legal professional’s workplace met twice with Uber executives in an effort to influence them to report these incidents to the authorities. However Uber was adamant it could not. It did, nevertheless, launch a brand new security report in the summertime, revealing that the speed of reported sexual assaults decreased by 38 p.c in 2019 and 2020.
The corporate has lengthy argued that sexual assault victims ought to be the one ones to manage when and the way their experiences are reported. This, the corporate says, is the stance taken by advocacy teams that help sexual assault survivors, together with the Rape, Abuse & Incest Nationwide Community, or RAINN, and the Nationwide Community to Finish Home Violence.
“Our place wasn’t created in a vacuum,” the corporate stated in a press release to The New York Instances. “It was guided by the foremost specialists on this difficulty and by survivors themselves, all of whom have persistently advised us that assuming somebody desires the police concerned, or pressuring them to take action, dangers re-traumatizing them.”
Sandra Henriquez, chief govt of ValorUS, an affiliation of rape disaster facilities and sexual assault prevention packages that has lengthy labored with Uber on insurance policies associated to sexual assault, sat in on one of many conferences with the Santa Clara district legal professional’s workplace. She too advised the district legal professional that Uber mustn’t share reviews of sexual assault with the police.
“When survivors come ahead and share one thing, they need to have management over who that data will get shared with,” she stated. “That selection ought to belong to them and nobody else.”
Ms. Henriquez had assumed that Santa Clara had dropped the matter — till she and Uber had been contacted by The New York Instances. In her thoughts, there aren’t any circumstances the place Uber ought to reveal these incidents to regulation enforcement.
However after discussions with Uber and Ms. Henriquez, the mayor and the district legal professional’s workplace nonetheless consider that Uber ought to report all such incidents to the authorities. And so they stated they’d proceed pressuring the corporate to take action.
Mr. Rosen, the district legal professional, stated the considerations of sexual assault victims have to be balanced with the necessity for public security. If Uber disclosed incidents to the police, he stated, victims might nonetheless select whether or not or to not speak to them.
He stated the county has additionally had problem convincing schools and universities within the space to report accusations of sexual assault. However all faculties within the county, together with Stanford College, have now agreed to take action.
“That is what I’m on the lookout for from Uber,” Mr. Rosen stated. “It’s in Uber’s curiosity to do that if it desires to be a constructive a part of society — simply as it’s in Stanford’s curiosity or the Catholic Church’s curiosity.”
Mr. Rosen additionally questions whether or not Uber correctly explains to victims that contacting the police is an choice. It’s shocking, he stated, that so few victims report sexual assault incidents to the county.
An Uber spokesman stated that starting in 2020, a number of the victims obtain an electronic mail that gives a hotline quantity operated by RAINN and mentions the choice to report back to regulation enforcement.
“We consider the choice to report back to regulation enforcement is completely as much as you. Should you determine to report this to police, please present regulation enforcement with our on-line portal deal with,” the e-mail reads, in keeping with the corporate. “You don’t want to report back to regulation enforcement as a way to name the hotline quantity above.”
Mayor Liccardo, who was a part of one other assembly with Uber on the finish of September, stated the corporate ought to a minimum of explicitly clarify to victims that the corporate doesn’t report sexual assault incidents to the police and that incidents won’t be formally investigated or prosecuted except the victims themselves notify regulation enforcement.
“It’s astounding that we hear arguments from these corporations couched within the language of defending the company and autonomy of sexual assault survivors, when in truth they aren’t giving data to survivors that explains how they’ll take motion to make sure assailants are arrested and prosecuted,” he stated.
Mr. Liccardo, who’s a former felony prosecutor, is exploring the creation of a metropolis ordinance that may require Uber and different ride-hailing corporations to report all incidents themselves. He stated he deliberate to ship a memo to the San Jose Metropolis Council this week that requires this new metropolis regulation.
Although Uber says it won’t share private particulars with the authorities, there could also be different potentialities. When Uber settled with the California Public Utilities Fee, it agreed to share data on sexual assault and harassment to the California regulator in a manner that retains victims nameless and offers a manner for them to share extra data in the event that they select to.
The district legal professional is a minimum of hoping for some kind of trial settlement. “We’re in Silicon Valley, so we’re huge on trials and pilots,” Mr. Rosen stated. “Let’s simply see the way it works.”