Woman Held In San Francisco Assault After Pepper-Spraying, Coughing At Uber Driver

A woman was arrested Thursday on suspicion of pepper-spraying an Uber driver in San Francisco who was coughed at and insulted after he demanded a passenger wear a mask, police announced.

Malaysia King, 24, was arrested in Las Vegas on suspicion of assault with a caustic chemical, assault and battery and other charges. She was being held without bail. It wasn't immediately clear whether she had an attorney to speak on her behalf.

Arna Kimiai, 24, who also was sought in connection with Saturday's attack, indicated through legal counsel that she intended to turn herself in soon, a San Francisco Police Department statement said.

“The behaviour captured on video in this incident showed a callous disregard for the safety and wellbeing of an essential service worker in the midst of a deadly pandemic,” Lt. Tracy McCray, who heads the Police Department's Robbery Detail, said in the statement.

The Uber driver, Subhakar Khadkas, was attacked in the city's Bayview District after he picked up three women. When he noticed one woman wasn't masked, Khadkas stopped the ride and told the passengers he couldn't continue, according to police.

A video then shows the women in the back seat berating Khadka, using profanities while the car is stopped on the shoulder of a highway. At one point, the woman without the mask coughs on him, grabs his cellphone from the center dash area and rips off his face mask.

Khadka told KPIX-TV Tuesday that after the women got out of the car, another of the women pepper-sprayed him through the front passenger window.

Khadka says he had to get out of his car because it became difficult to breathe.

“I never said anything bad to them, I never cursed, I was not raised that way,” Khadka said.

Khadka said he believes he was attacked because he is a South Asian immigrant. He came to the US eight years ago and works hard to support his family in Nepal.

Uber said in a statement Thursday that it had banned all three riders. “Uber does not tolerate racism or hate in any form, against any community," the statement said.

Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft have teamed up to create a database of drivers ousted from their ride-hailing services for complaints about sexual assault and other crimes that have raised passenger-safety concerns for years.

The clearinghouse unveiled Thursday will initially list drivers expelled by the ride-hailing rivals in the U.S. But it will also be open to other companies that deploy workers to perform services such as delivering groceries or take-out orders from restaurants.

The new safeguard, dubbed the “sharing safety programme," will be overseen by HireRight, a specialist in background checks. The use of a third party is aimed at addressing potential legal concerns about companies, including competitors such as Uber and Lyft, having access to information to each other's personnel matters.

“Lyft and Uber are competitors in a whole lot of ways, but on this issue of safety, we completely agree that folks should be safe no matter what platform they choose," Tony West, Uber's chief legal officer, told The Associated Press. He spoke in an interview that also included Jennifer Brandenburger, Lyft's head of policy development.

The safety programme follows through on a promise that Uber made 15 months ago when it revealed that more than 3,000 sexual assaults had been reported on its service in the U.S. during 2018.

Since that revelation, San Francisco-based Uber and Lyft have been working to navigate through antitrust and privacy concerns to create a way to flag drivers who have engaged in violent or other abhorrent behaviour that culminated in them being booted off their services.

Sharing the information about reported sexual assaults is considered especially important because victims of such crimes frequently don't file formal complaints with police. That gap has opened a crack for potentially dangerous drivers to slip through routine background checks drawing upon legal records, Brandenburger said.

To protect privacy, no passenger information will be shared in the database and the incidents that resulted in a driver's dismissal will be listed in six broad categories: attempted non-consensual sexual penetration; non-consensual touching of a sexual body part; non-consensual kissing of a sexual body part; non-consensual kissing of a non-sexual body part; non-consensual sexual penetration; and fatal physical assaults.

Only “fraction of a fraction" of drivers have engaged in behaviour that fall into those categories, West said. Any company with access to the clearinghouse of information could still decide to allow a driver on its service after its own investigation, West said.

Michael Wolfe, a Uber driver who also leads a Washington state group representing about 2,000 other drivers, praised both ride-hailing services for trying to weed out the abuses in the industry.

“The few bad apples give all us drivers a bad name," said Wolfe, executive director for Drive Forward.

The added layer of protection was hailed by the Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network, a victims' rights group that has criticized the ride-hailing services for not doing more rigorous screening of their drivers.

“Sexual violence thrives in secrecy," said Scott Berkowitz, the network's president. “Thanks to this initiative, perpetrators will no longer be able to hide or escape accountability by simply switching ridesharing platforms."

It could also help appease U.S. lawmakers, who have criticized Uber and Lyft in the past for inadequate safety protections for their riders.

Lyft hasn't delivered on its promise to release a report about past problems on its service because the company is waiting for Uber to resolve a privacy dispute with California regulators, according to Brandenburger.

After Uber detailed past abuses on its service in its December 2019 report, California's Public Utilities Commission sought the victims' names and contact numbers. After Uber rebuffed the request to protect the victims' privacy, the agency slapped the company with a USD 59 million fine. The dispute is now in the appeals process.

The safety feature is rolling out at a time when both ride-hailing services are still trying to rebound from the pandemic-driven lockdowns that have prevented people from travelling and curtailed demand for rides, especially from strangers.