LA District Attorney: Uber hired drivers with serious criminal histories

The debate intensified this week.

But California isn’t the only state that is experiencing fallout from the shortcomings of the Uber driver background check process. Jackie Lacey.

“I support technological innovation“, Gascon said in an e-mailed statement. After the driver dropped the friend at Bellandur, he refused to go further and drop the woman at Hebbal, leading to an argument.

“At least three times a week”, said one rider.

Those companies, as well as their users, say the conventional rules shouldn’t apply in the age of the “sharing economy”, where online platforms connect individuals to do business with one another instead of established and heavily regulated corporation (albeit as a less heavily regulated corporation takes a cut).

But coming at ride hailing from a consumer safety angle is usually a safe political bet, he said.

“Most cab companies do same thing right?”

SF District Attorney George Gascón said in a hastily called news conference late Wednesday, “We are learning increasingly that a lot of the information that Uber has been presenting the consumer has been false and misleading”.

Safety regulations for the new service have been a key concern here and elsewhere.

His Uber background check was OK’d in June, the company confirmed.

Californian taxi drivers are now required to provide fingerprints for background checks, something that Uber drivers are exempted from; any other security checks are less comprehensive, and slip-ups can occur more often.

They accuse Uber of being misleading when it comes to claims they do background checks, and thorough ones, on all their drivers.

Cesar Fernandez is a public policy associate for Uber. “The background process can not tell if someone was convicted of a serious crime that was more than seven years ago”, he said.

The complaint lists several drivers who passed Uber’s background check process despite having criminal histories and driving records that are disqualifying under Uber’s own representations.

One of the drivers cited is a convicted murderer who spent 26 years in prison before being released on parole in 2008.

He allegedly joined Uber in 2014 under a fake name and gave 1,168 rides before being discovered.

Last month, a bill that would cap the number of for-hire vehicles given permits was defeated after vocal protests by Uber drivers and supporters.

California prosecutors claim the ride sharing company allows people with major criminal history to drive for them.

The full council is scheduled to vote on the LAX proposal next week.

“Within the UK all partner-drivers are absolutely licensed by the native authority As such all of them bear the identical vetting course of all taxi and cab drivers undergo, this consists of an enhanced DBS verify”. But if Uber puts a new requirement on drivers to be fingerprinted, that might come up in such a labor dispute.