> “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?
>“We are very proud of this team’s work and know they approach their jobs with tremendous compassion and understanding,” the spokesperson said. “Characterizing this team as anything but providing support to people after a difficult experience is just wrong."
>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.
> 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.
I don't think Uber or any company should be making a decision whether to or not - reporting should always be mandatory. Especially if anyone may be in danger.
The company does not have, or cannot be expected to have, the training or knowledge to make the call whether or not there is a problem. That should be passed on to the people have the knowledge to make that call, and that training is part of their job.
The police are the ones who get to look at the report and decide if something is worth investigating, and whether there is enough evidence, or what even is evidence, to lay charges.
The best way to remain impartial and not endanger the company, is for the company not to make the call.
I'm aware US police have an inflammatory history and culture in responding to priority emergency calls, but that isn't a police report.
Reports take time, and pass through a bunch of proceedings before any action is taken - the first usually being a sit-down interview with the victim, if any action is chosen to be taken.
Could the police possibly visit your house based on that report at some point in the future to ask some questions, carrying guns? For some people, that's potentially lethal situation. There are so many reports of random things police do when they turn up and some dog barks or something and it ends up with a hail of gunfire for some reason.
I don't care if the police officers were lying or not, you just showed me an absolutely shocking number of people resisting against police with their firearms. I'm sure many innocent people were killed by the police in the USA but the number of guilty people is even bigger.
If you have to build a law enforcement system that absolutely has to be able to deal with armed criminals then the end result is that violence escalates even when it could be avoided. You won't find meaningful gains in changing the behavior of the officers in such a society.
> I don't think Uber or any company should be making a decision whether to or not - reporting should always be mandatory. Especially if anyone may be in danger.
See also the Catholic sexual abuse scandals, it's the exact same situation.
Banks fraud departments are there to comply with the law as well as to protect the company and are in many countries legally compelled to contact the authorities.
>I do agree that the victim can / should go to the police if they wish to.
It's really important for a victim to maintain autonomy when dealing with traumatic events. Uber's move should be to contact the victim and ask them what they would like to do and offer them all the information they need to (reasonably) facilitate that in regards to criminal investigation.
> 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
Giving an option to click a button is not the same as supporting the victim by listening to their concerns and acting appropriately. It's a very inhumane approach to a problem that requires compassion, tact, and awareness.
In my experience the stereotype is well deserved. I have in the past reported impropriety during a company conference, and specified I was doing it to make sure people were advised to knock it off and avoid getting ourselves a Uber style scandal, I was put on probation right away (the CTO was involved) and I had to leave the company right after that. It wasn't worth to sue them and frankly the job sucked, but that taught me the valuable lesson that even if you're looking out for the business, HR is still not your ally. HR serves executives and nobody else.
The majority of people in the profession don't change the incentives. They work for the company, push comes to shove that is their job.
They might help me figure out some insurance thing here or there and really care, but when it comes to something important they are there for the company, not me.
Doesn't everyone at the company... work for the company? An Engineering Manager has an incentive to overwork engineers to a hit a deadline -- and, yes, sometimes that happens! -- but in addition to just being a bad thing to do, that comes at a huge long term cost to the business. It's much better for the company and the employees to not overwork them. If HR is doing it right, supporting the company and supporting its employees are compatible goals.
> supporting the company and supporting its employees are compatible goals.
Until an employee does something that puts themselves at odds with the company. At which point HR is the tip of the spear when it comes to protecting the company from that employee. "Here's how to let them go legally." "Here's how we bribe them into not talking bad about us." "Here's our zero tolerance policy we can fit our employee firing into."
People =/= department. That goes for many things beyond HR as well, but in general you'll often find good HR people with good intentions who nonetheless end up doing shitty things to employees when it's a choice between being nice and protecting the company.
Could you please clarify? My understanding is that HR's job is to protect the company, not the employee. If the employee is "helped," it's typically to shield the company from lawsuits. So, acting in the employee's best interest is often aligned with helping the company. But, if the employee's interest is seen as diverging from that of the company, HR will "side" with the company against the employee. Do you disagree?
Let's say there are several independent reports of an important, senior manager sexually assaulting employees, and the HR manager wants to cover it up.
They only need a one or two people able and willing to deliver a cover-up, not the entire department. It could well be 95% of people in the profession would categorically refuse if asked to do so.
Generally I agree that it's good practice to submit the original source. In this case and since the Verge article is pretty concise I thought it's the better choice.
Mods: Feel free to change the link if you deem it appropriate.
> 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
Yeah I was just thinking of the opposite.. if Uber recorded all rides and screened them for felonies. Someone playfully hits someone in the backseat and Uber calls it in "just in case".
Seems like it should be up to the victim if they want to press charges.
That said I think Uber is trying to avoid the lawsuit regarding "you guys need to do more to screen your drivers!" Taking more responsibility about their drivers actions. The lawsuit is bound to happen eventually.
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.
My position is "never talk to police without an attorney" -(although this wouldn't apply if I were reporting a crime). Uber has plenty of attorneys either way. There is no conflict.
> 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.
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.
I think the main issue here is the public face they try to maintain (we're a changed company, tech bro' dude culture is now erradicated, we take security very seriously, etc ad nauseum) with what they are really pulling off in the back end.
Namely the exact same shit that they always did.
Do they still charge $1 "security" surcharge, which Uber actually just pocketed?
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?