Martinez, Viveca

From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:

Kyle Hoskins
Wednesday, October 14, 2015 2:44 PM
Adler, Steve; Houston, Ora; District 2; Renteria, Sabino; Casar, Gregorio; District 5;
Zimmerman, Don; District 7; District 8; Tovo, Kathie; District10
Correction to "Making Austin a Safer City.": 1, not 4 cases

This message is from Kyle Hoskins. [

CORRECTION: 1, not 4 cases could possibly have been prevented by fingerprint background checks.
I apologize, but I need to make a correction to my previous email entitled Making Austin a Safer City.
Fingerprint background checks would NOT have prevented 4 of 18 sexual assaults in Lyft/Uber cases in the
United States. They would have prevented 1, not 4. (one case, a DUI 2012 in a misdemeanor fondling in an
Uber)
I did not account for the fact that having a criminal background does not disqualify you from being a taxi, limo,
or Uber driver depending on when it occurred. In some cities the limit is up to 10 years, and in others, only 5. In
two of the cases four cases I described, the convictions were 10+ and 8 years prior which would mean they
would have been eligible to pass a fingerprint background check and become a taxi driver in their city.
The other removed case is an example where the taxi 10 year requirement in Virginia Beach would have
disqualified the offender, whereas Uber's 7 year policy did not. A fingerprint check would not have made a
difference because Uber still would not have cared with their 7 year regulation.
I apologize for falling victim to the medias criminal background claims without first recognizing
the difference between a criminal background and an eligible criminal background to still be a limo or
taxi driver.
In other disturbing news closer to home, the taxi driver who committed a sexual assault here in Austin in 2014
would not have qualified to be an Uber driver, but apparently passed taxi background checks in 2009
and 2011 within Ubers 7 year window of the drivers 2005 assault conviction. (also convicted in 2003)
While this would disqualify them from driving Uber (no felony or misdemeanor cases involving violence within
7 years), apparently not so for taxi:
A representative with the City of Austin Transportation Department says family violence arrests and
convictions do not cause an individual to fail a background check
http://kxan.com/2014/02/04/yellow-cab-driver-arrested-for-sexual-assault/
If that is true and is still the case, perhaps that should be part of the solution proposed to make ground
transportation safer.
I can tell you one thing: fingerprint background checks are not the answer. (If you haven't read the original
article I wrote, please refer to that for more possible solutions)

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Making Austin a Safer City

I set out to test a hypothesis of what I believed to be a fair proposition for overall ground transportation safety:
Require fingerprint background checks to drive between Midnight and 4AM.
I tested this theory based on the cases of sexual assault in the United States from Lyft and Uber rides.
According to estimates, 80% of sexual assault cases are not reported due to the trauma and personal nature
involved in these cases, and when they are, they arent recorded as to their source; however,
http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/ was created with the sole purpose of logging every case of assault from Lyft
and Uber. These are the cases I drew this data from.
My theory was reasonably correct that these cases were more likely to occur between midnight and 4AM. 9 of
the 18 cases were in these hours.
However, if fingerprint background checks for driving Midnight-4AM could only stop 9 cases, I dont think
thats enough.
Even so, I wanted to check how many of those 9 cases and fingerprint background check would prevent. One.
One case.
Out of 18 cases, 4 could have been prevented by fingerprint background check. To me, when thinking about
safety, leaving 14 of 18 cases on the table is too many.
I also examined the arrests related to these cases, and found that crime doesnt pay as an Uber/Lyft driver
because you get caught. Nearly immediately. In fact, catching perpetrators is so successful when the crime is
committed as an Uber driver, that in one case, they managed to catch a man tied to 5 previous sexual assaults
that he got away with.
How does this compare to taxis? Considering there are substantially more taxi rides (for the time being) across
America, there are naturally more cases of sexual assault. No one has a complete list like they do for Lyft/Uber
drivers, but in an hour, I was able to compile a list of 20+ cases in the United States in 2014-2015. Some points
of interest:
A couple of the cases were repeat offenders who finally got caught.
Cases reported generally fell into two categories:
o Driver was arrested or finally arrested. (I had to discard several old cases that were finally closed in
2014-2015 because its not as easy to track down taxi driver offenders)
o Police went to the media to help find the driver matching a description because they didnt have the
information available to them as they do in the open and shut Uber/Lyft cases.
In my eyes, the two key points are police needing to go to the media for help to find someone fitting a
description, and drivers who had committed multiple offenses as taxi drivers before being caught.
Those are both frightening to me. How do we fix those? Make taxis more like Uber and Lyft. These are the
more common cases than the 4 cases fingerprints could have prevented in TNCs.
Fingerprint background checks are not the gold standard to avoid and solve crimes as was echoed
during the last Mobility Committee meeting. Knowing the offender, where the offender is, what car to locate the
offender in, knowing the victim, knowing where the victim is, and knowing what time the crime occurs at
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