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Uber Driver Charged with Attempted Murder Had an ‘Extensive Criminal Record’

55 points by taylorbuley 10y ago

Fricken 10y ago
Calgary's Mayor Naheed Nenshi was caught off the record a few months ago by a Lyft driver using Periscope speaking candidly about the city's headaches with Uber. 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. https://youtu.be/YKglTLcw2rs https://youtu.be/YKglTLcw2rs (Talk of background checks begins at 5:50)
- corndoge 10y ago
  Should we ban everyone who has a criminal history (violent or otherwise) from every job on the planet? If someone got in a bar fight and was convicted for assault ("has a violent criminal history") twenty years ago should that preclude them from driving an Uber? "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.
  - thebiglebrewski 10y ago
    Do you work for Uber? Aren't you perturbed that they lied about doing something even moreso than the philosophical argument for or against hiring ex-cons?
  - Loughla 10y ago
    No we should not. But stating that you do background checks, and then definitely not doing them at all is the problem the op talked about.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - Sacho 10y ago
      But we're still arguing the same point as parent - should finding a criminal record with a background check preclude someone from work? If not, then the mayor's experiment only proved that Uber's (possibly nonexistent) background checks did not consider the particular offenses egregious enough.
  - antihero 10y ago
    Depends on the crime, if you've nicked something from a shop as a kid or sold a bit of blow, who gives a shit? If it's a violent or sexual crime, probably not great to employ someone in a job where they can drive drunk people to places.
    - gambiting 10y ago
      If you got into a drunken brawl at a bar at the age of 18, you forever have a "violent offender" badge. Should that stop you from getting any job in the future? In this case - driving a cab?
      - st3v3r 10y ago
        Any job? No. But we're not talking about any job. We're talking about one, very specific type of job.
        gambiting 10y ago
        Sure, but are you really saying that someone who was in a fight at the age of 18, can't be a cab driver at say age 40? It doesn't make any sense to me.
        st3v3r 10y ago
        You'd have to take into account how long ago the conviction was, and what's happened since then. But at age 20? I would say probably not.
        antihero 10y ago
        Should be case by case really. If they viciously attacked someone then no, if they just got into a punch-up then who cares, shit happens.
    - Vraxx 10y ago
      Somebody posed this question elsewhere in this article's thread and I do think it's the most important question. Would the position that this violent/sexual offender is being considered for increase their chances of performing a violent/sexual crime as compared to their chance of committing a similar crime without that job. I think you were touching on that idea, but I feel it is important enough to clarify.
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    Uber says "We perform background checks" because it reassures their customers. To implement your suggestion, it seems like people should either stop feeling scared when driving with convicted felons or Uber should get powerful enough(possibly by making consumers dependent on them) that they can ignore people's requests for non-felons. 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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - vkou 10y ago
    I entirely agree with you on this count - however, I think that if the vocation in question consists of "Getting into an unmarked car with a stranger, in a state of fatigue/inebriation, in a city you aren't familiar with," we should have a different standard for background checks then we do for, say, a roofer.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    "Should we ban everyone who has a criminal history (violent or otherwise) from every job on the planet?" How on earth are you able to make the jump from Uber driver to every job on the planet?
  - ncr100 10y ago
    Second chance within reason. Felons can be blocked from working in positions where they've proven themselves to do felonies, AFAIK.
  - zaroth 10y ago
    I think the primary point is that if Uber is saying they are doing background checks, and claiming they are screening their drivers, then it's important that those checks are actually being done. 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".
rco8786 10y ago
Brings up the broader question of "are people with criminal records simply unhireable?" 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.
- jessriedel 10y ago
  I'm OK with violent offenders being effectively banned forever from transporting people alone in a car. In this case, the driver was "facing 17 additional...charges" including "weapons possession, arson, armed robbery, burglary, vehicle theft".
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    Of course you are okay with it, because it's out-of-sight, out of mind. 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.
    - sickbeard 10y ago
      Disagree. it's the same reason people who are categorized as sex offenders arent allowed around kids. It's not that they can't work but really it makes sense to prevent a violent offender to be the driver of a taxi.
      - nilved 10y ago
        It might be the same reason, but that isn't a good reason. The sex offender registry is a product of some politicians pandering to a maternal instinct. It's not grounded in evidence or ethics, and it's not effective.
darawk 10y ago
This drumbeat that Uber needs to do background checks is so incredibly silly and naive. 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.
- dionidium 10y ago
  Does being an Uber driver make a violent criminal more likely to commit a violent crime? The actual question: should a person who is more likely to commit a violent crime be allowed to hold any job?
- st3v3r 10y ago
  "This drumbeat that Uber needs to do background checks is so incredibly silly and naive." 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.
  - darawk 10y ago
    In what way are they responsible? 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? 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?
cdubzzz 10y ago
> It seems like an Uber driver is charged with a violent crime nearly every day. 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!
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  > After placing Mr. Hemming in handcuffs, officers also found a needle cap, a prescription vial, a syringe, rubber tie off straps, live shotgun shells, live handgun rounds, a pill bottle, a metal pill holder, a handcuff key, garden clippers and a pocket knife in his pants pocket. I see he was also wearing his pants of holding +1, great journalism guys.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    The way he wrote "live shotgun shells" and "live handgun rounds" signaled to me his intent to be alarmist rather than factual. Live as opposed to, what, inert? Inert rounds are way harder to get your hands on. Live rounds cost cents each and can be bought at tens of thousands of store with nothing beyond proof of age. Having ammunition means nothing and is completely routine to a very large swath of the country. Clarifying that it's "live" is using alarmist scare words.
    - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
      I've yet to see anything in the "tens of thousands" in a retail setting except maybe .22LR on a pallet being delivered to Walmart and no round is cheap enough that an individual buys tens of thousands for personal use in one transaction. I totally agree that the language came off as alarmist but find it amusing that you're alarmist in your response.
      - CydeWeys 10y ago
        Can be bought at tens of thousands of stores. I wasn't saying anything about quantity of purchase. And the reason I said that was to illustrate how utterly mundane it is to be able to purchase ammunition, including in Walmarts across most of the country. How am I being alarmist? Be specific.
Scaevolus 10y ago
I wonder what that $1/ride "Safe Rides Fee" is for, if not to run background checks?
throwanem 10y ago
It seems like a lot of people want to excuse Uber in this case, or want to build around it an argument that we should be forgiving and not judge convicted felons overly harshly, lest we make it impossible for them to rebuild their lives. While I have some sympathy for the latter argument in particular, basing such arguments on Hemming's situation strikes me as unwise. 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.. http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquirySearc.... [2] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai.. http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai.... [3] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai.. http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai....
- dajohnson89 10y ago
  If the only convictions someone had were the possession and forgery charges, I wouldn't mind. The domestic abuse case, I'm not sure.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    You wouldn't mind placing your life in the hands of someone with a documented history of both predilection for consciousness-altering substances, and poor future time orientation and impulse control? ...well, you're braver than I am, that's for sure.
  - ghurtado 10y ago
    The larger point is that it shouldn't be up to the individual consumer to decide which employee criminal records are acceptable and which ones are not. 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.
josh5555 10y ago
Why are the media and the community here picking on these justice-involved individuals? Everyone deserves a second, third and fourth chance.
jhayward 10y ago
Given Mr. Hemming's extensive record it seems unlikely a background check would have cleared him. So the conclusion is either that Uber didn't do one, or that Hemming falsified his identity. 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.

55 points by taylorbuley 10y ago

Calgary's Mayor Naheed Nenshi was caught off the record a few months ago by a Lyft driver using Periscope speaking candidly about the city's headaches with Uber. 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. https://youtu.be/YKglTLcw2rs https://youtu.be/YKglTLcw2rs (Talk of background checks begins at 5:50)

corndoge 10y ago
Should we ban everyone who has a criminal history (violent or otherwise) from every job on the planet? If someone got in a bar fight and was convicted for assault ("has a violent criminal history") twenty years ago should that preclude them from driving an Uber? "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.
- thebiglebrewski 10y ago
  Do you work for Uber? Aren't you perturbed that they lied about doing something even moreso than the philosophical argument for or against hiring ex-cons?
- Loughla 10y ago
  No we should not. But stating that you do background checks, and then definitely not doing them at all is the problem the op talked about.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Sacho 10y ago
    But we're still arguing the same point as parent - should finding a criminal record with a background check preclude someone from work? If not, then the mayor's experiment only proved that Uber's (possibly nonexistent) background checks did not consider the particular offenses egregious enough.
- antihero 10y ago
  Depends on the crime, if you've nicked something from a shop as a kid or sold a bit of blow, who gives a shit? If it's a violent or sexual crime, probably not great to employ someone in a job where they can drive drunk people to places.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    If you got into a drunken brawl at a bar at the age of 18, you forever have a "violent offender" badge. Should that stop you from getting any job in the future? In this case - driving a cab?
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      Any job? No. But we're not talking about any job. We're talking about one, very specific type of job.
      - gambiting 10y ago
        Sure, but are you really saying that someone who was in a fight at the age of 18, can't be a cab driver at say age 40? It doesn't make any sense to me.
        st3v3r 10y ago
        You'd have to take into account how long ago the conviction was, and what's happened since then. But at age 20? I would say probably not.
        antihero 10y ago
        Should be case by case really. If they viciously attacked someone then no, if they just got into a punch-up then who cares, shit happens.
  - Vraxx 10y ago
    Somebody posed this question elsewhere in this article's thread and I do think it's the most important question. Would the position that this violent/sexual offender is being considered for increase their chances of performing a violent/sexual crime as compared to their chance of committing a similar crime without that job. I think you were touching on that idea, but I feel it is important enough to clarify.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  Uber says "We perform background checks" because it reassures their customers. To implement your suggestion, it seems like people should either stop feeling scared when driving with convicted felons or Uber should get powerful enough(possibly by making consumers dependent on them) that they can ignore people's requests for non-felons. 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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- vkou 10y ago
  I entirely agree with you on this count - however, I think that if the vocation in question consists of "Getting into an unmarked car with a stranger, in a state of fatigue/inebriation, in a city you aren't familiar with," we should have a different standard for background checks then we do for, say, a roofer.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  "Should we ban everyone who has a criminal history (violent or otherwise) from every job on the planet?" How on earth are you able to make the jump from Uber driver to every job on the planet?
- ncr100 10y ago
  Second chance within reason. Felons can be blocked from working in positions where they've proven themselves to do felonies, AFAIK.
- zaroth 10y ago
  I think the primary point is that if Uber is saying they are doing background checks, and claiming they are screening their drivers, then it's important that those checks are actually being done. 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".

rco8786 10y ago

Brings up the broader question of "are people with criminal records simply unhireable?" 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.

jessriedel 10y ago
I'm OK with violent offenders being effectively banned forever from transporting people alone in a car. In this case, the driver was "facing 17 additional...charges" including "weapons possession, arson, armed robbery, burglary, vehicle theft".
- DannyBee 10y ago
  Of course you are okay with it, because it's out-of-sight, out of mind. 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.
  - sickbeard 10y ago
    Disagree. it's the same reason people who are categorized as sex offenders arent allowed around kids. It's not that they can't work but really it makes sense to prevent a violent offender to be the driver of a taxi.
    - nilved 10y ago
      It might be the same reason, but that isn't a good reason. The sex offender registry is a product of some politicians pandering to a maternal instinct. It's not grounded in evidence or ethics, and it's not effective.

darawk 10y ago

This drumbeat that Uber needs to do background checks is so incredibly silly and naive. 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.

dionidium 10y ago
Does being an Uber driver make a violent criminal more likely to commit a violent crime? The actual question: should a person who is more likely to commit a violent crime be allowed to hold any job?
st3v3r 10y ago
"This drumbeat that Uber needs to do background checks is so incredibly silly and naive." 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.
- darawk 10y ago
  In what way are they responsible? 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? 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?

cdubzzz 10y ago

> It seems like an Uber driver is charged with a violent crime nearly every day. 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!

cmdrfred 10y ago
> After placing Mr. Hemming in handcuffs, officers also found a needle cap, a prescription vial, a syringe, rubber tie off straps, live shotgun shells, live handgun rounds, a pill bottle, a metal pill holder, a handcuff key, garden clippers and a pocket knife in his pants pocket. I see he was also wearing his pants of holding +1, great journalism guys.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  The way he wrote "live shotgun shells" and "live handgun rounds" signaled to me his intent to be alarmist rather than factual. Live as opposed to, what, inert? Inert rounds are way harder to get your hands on. Live rounds cost cents each and can be bought at tens of thousands of store with nothing beyond proof of age. Having ammunition means nothing and is completely routine to a very large swath of the country. Clarifying that it's "live" is using alarmist scare words.
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    I've yet to see anything in the "tens of thousands" in a retail setting except maybe .22LR on a pallet being delivered to Walmart and no round is cheap enough that an individual buys tens of thousands for personal use in one transaction. I totally agree that the language came off as alarmist but find it amusing that you're alarmist in your response.
    - CydeWeys 10y ago
      Can be bought at tens of thousands of stores. I wasn't saying anything about quantity of purchase. And the reason I said that was to illustrate how utterly mundane it is to be able to purchase ammunition, including in Walmarts across most of the country. How am I being alarmist? Be specific.

Scaevolus 10y ago

I wonder what that $1/ride "Safe Rides Fee" is for, if not to run background checks?

throwanem 10y ago

It seems like a lot of people want to excuse Uber in this case, or want to build around it an argument that we should be forgiving and not judge convicted felons overly harshly, lest we make it impossible for them to rebuild their lives. While I have some sympathy for the latter argument in particular, basing such arguments on Hemming's situation strikes me as unwise. 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.. http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquirySearc.... [2] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai.. http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai.... [3] http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai.. http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/inquiryDetai....

dajohnson89 10y ago
If the only convictions someone had were the possession and forgery charges, I wouldn't mind. The domestic abuse case, I'm not sure.
- throwanem 10y ago
  You wouldn't mind placing your life in the hands of someone with a documented history of both predilection for consciousness-altering substances, and poor future time orientation and impulse control? ...well, you're braver than I am, that's for sure.
- ghurtado 10y ago
  The larger point is that it shouldn't be up to the individual consumer to decide which employee criminal records are acceptable and which ones are not. 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.

josh5555 10y ago

Why are the media and the community here picking on these justice-involved individuals? Everyone deserves a second, third and fourth chance.

jhayward 10y ago

Given Mr. Hemming's extensive record it seems unlikely a background check would have cleared him. So the conclusion is either that Uber didn't do one, or that Hemming falsified his identity. 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.