National News
City of Houston to fight Uber on background checks
April 08, 2015 posted by Steve Brownstein
There is a bill that is working its way through the Legislature that would allow transportation network companies, like Uber, to solely be responsible for doing background checks on its drivers.
The city of Houston is against this plan and said the city should be allowed to conduct a more stringent background check to ensure safety.
"We want to ensure that anyone in the city of Houston, when you get in one of these cars, be it a taxi or an Uber, that you know that the driver is safe and the vehicle is safe," said Lara Cottingham, with the city of Houston.
Last week, Channel 2 reported a case where a woman said she was picked up by an Uber driver, Duncan Burton, and then raped at his home. Burton passed the Uber background check, but never passed the city's and never applied to be a licensed driver.
"Based on information that has come forward today, those charges were on his background, he would not have passed our background check and he would automatically have been denied a license," Cottingham said.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Burton was locked in Federal Prison back in 1998 on a charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilos or more of cocaine. He was released in 2012.
The city said if it would have done a background check on Burton, it would have caught that case.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Houston said she is fighting the bill that is being discussed in Austin.
"They can stop anybody from operating with that app. All they have to do is turn off the app to that individual driver, they didn't do that," Mayor Annise Parker said. "They had to know that this person was operating illegally on the streets of Houston so we are going to be going after Uber right now."
