October 2022 By Cade Metz

Cade Metz, who covers driverless cars, robotics and other emerging technologies, reported this article in San Jose, Calif.

Silicon Valley County Battles With Uber Over Reporting of Sexual Assault

Uber does not inform the police of such incidents, citing advocacy group guidelines. But officials in Santa Clara County argue that it should.

In December 2019, Uber released its first “safety transparency report,” revealing that it had received nearly 6,000 reports of sexual assault on rides in 2017 and 2018. More than 1,240 of those complaints were made in California, according to numbers released by the California Public Utilities Commission.

Considering that Santa Clara County contains 5 percent of the state’s population, the district attorney’s office estimated that 62 assaults had occurred in the county during that two-year stretch. But only one incident was reported to the police.

Uber declined to discuss the estimate. The figure may include incidents that the district attorney would not prosecute.

This past spring, the district attorney’s office met twice with Uber executives in an effort to persuade them to report these incidents to the authorities. But Uber was adamant that it would not. It did, however, release a new safety report in the summer, revealing that the rate of reported sexual assaults decreased by 38 percent in 2019 and 2020.

The company has long argued that sexual assault victims should be the only ones to control when and how their experiences are reported. This, the company says, is the stance taken by advocacy groups that support sexual assault survivors, including the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, or RAINN, and the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

 “Our position wasn’t created in a vacuum,” the company said in a statement to The New York Times. “It was guided by the foremost experts on this issue and by survivors themselves, all of whom have consistently told us that assuming someone wants the police involved, or pressuring them to do so, risks re-traumatizing them.”

Sandra Henriquez, chief executive of ValorUS, an association of rape crisis centers and sexual assault prevention programs that has long worked with Uber on policies related to sexual assault, sat in on one of the meetings with the Santa Clara district attorney’s office. She, too, told the district attorney that Uber should not share reports of sexual assault with the police.

“When survivors come forward and share something, they want to have control over who that information gets shared with,” she said. “That choice should belong to them and no one else.”

Ms. Henriquez had assumed that Santa Clara had dropped the matter — until The Times contacted her and Uber. In her mind, there are no circumstances in which Uber should reveal these incidents to law enforcement.

But after discussions with Uber and Ms. Henriquez, the mayor and the district attorney’s office still believe that Uber should report all such incidents to the authorities. And they said they would continue pressuring the company to do so.

Terry Harman, an assistant district attorney in Santa Clara County, studied the number of sexual assault cases that Uber reported to the county.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

He said the county had also had difficulty persuading colleges and universities in the area to report accusations of sexual assault. But all schools in the county, including Stanford University, have now agreed to do so.

“This is what I am looking for from Uber,” Mr. Rosen said. “It is in Uber’s interest to do this if it wants to be a positive part of society — just as it is in Stanford’s interest or the Catholic Church’s interest.”

Mr. Rosen also questions whether Uber properly explains to victims that contacting the police is an option. It is surprising, he said, that so few victims report sexual assaults to the county.

An Uber spokesman said that beginning in 2020, some of the victims receive an email that provides a hotline number operated by RAINN and mentions the option to report to law enforcement.

“We believe the decision to report to law enforcement is entirely up to you. If you decide to report this to police, please provide law enforcement with our online portal address,” the email reads, according to the company. “You do not need to report to law enforcement in order to call the hotline number above.”

Sandra Henriquez, the chief executive of an association of rape crisis centers, argues that the decision to report sexual assaults to the police should be left to individuals. Credit...Tag Christof for The New York Times

Mayor Liccardo, who was part of another meeting with Uber at the end of September, said the company should at least explicitly explain to victims that the company does not report sexual assault incidents to the police and that incidents will not be officially investigated or prosecuted unless the victims themselves notify law enforcement.

“It is astounding that we hear arguments from these companies couched in the language of protecting the agency and autonomy of sexual assault survivors, when in fact they are not giving information to survivors that explains how they can take action to ensure assailants are arrested and prosecuted,” he said.

Mr. Liccardo, who is a former criminal prosecutor, is exploring the creation of a city ordinance that would require Uber and other ride-hailing companies to report all incidents themselves. He said he planned to send a memo to the San Jose City Council this week that calls for this new city law.

Though Uber says it will not share personal details with the authorities, there may be other possibilities. When Uber settled with the California Public Utilities Commission, it agreed to share information on sexual assault and harassment to the California regulator in a way that keeps victims anonymous and provides a way for them to share more information if they choose to.

The district attorney is at least hoping for some sort of trial agreement. “We’re in Silicon Valley, so we’re big on trials and pilots,” Mr. Rosen said. “Let’s just see how it works.”