[Ohio-Communities-of-Faith] Uber Almost Got Me Killed, by Ronza Othman

[smturner.234 at gmail.com]

Braille Monitor Article Text:

[PHOTO CAPTION: Ronza Othman]

Uber Almost Got Me Killed!

by Ronza Othman

>From the Associate Editor: This article originally appeared in the Summer
2024 issue of the Braille Spectator, the publication of the National
Federation of the Blind of Maryland. We are reprinting it with light edits.
Ronza Othman serves as president of that affiliate. She is also president of
the National Association of Blind Government Employees and of the National
Association of Blind Lawyers, chairperson of our Code of Conduct Feedback
Committee, an active member of the Blind Muslims Group, and more, all on top
of her high-pressure day job with the federal government. Despite already
having all of these roles, she jokes she is eager to assume yet another as
the next Disney princess. In a much less lighthearted vein, we note that the
details in this article may profoundly disturb some readers, but we feel it
is an important story to tell. It highlights not only the continued
discrimination experienced by blind people at the hands of rideshare drivers
but also how Ronza’s intersecting characteristics and ignorance of
disability rights on the part of a member of law enforcement escalated an
already tense situation to a traumatic, but thankfully not tragic, event. It
is clear from Ronza’s experience that Uber has not done enough to educate
its drivers, or even its customer service personnel and supervisors on its
policy forbidding discrimination against blind passengers with guide dogs.
That is why, as this issue of the Braille Monitor goes to press,
Federationists from across the nation are preparing to conduct a rally
before the headquarters of both Uber and Lyft, the country’s two leading
rideshare providers. Here is Ronza’s story:

Discrimination against the blind is an all-too-frequent occurrence, but
sometimes how companies and law enforcement respond could literally get us
killed. Uber discriminated against me and a fellow passenger who uses a
guide dog in July of 2023, and instead of protecting me as the law requires,
local law enforcement instead held me at gunpoint and treated me like I was
the criminal. Then, after I didn’t die at the hands of the police (probably
because my friends were filming the encounter on their phones) and filed a
report with Uber, Uber summarily kicked me off their platform in retaliation
for my complaint.

On the first night of the 2023 NFB National Convention in Houston, the
National Association of Blind Lawyers got together for dinner at the home of
one of our division board members. We brought along some other lawyers,
because we tend to travel in packs, including Eve Hill, the lawyers’ lawyer
and NFB General Counsel. I also brought along three NFB National Scholarship
finalists, two of whom were going into law. One of the students had a guide
dog. We had a wonderful dinner, and everyone left in a jubilant mood.

I called an Uber to take my group of four bipeds and a quadruped back to the
hotel around 10:15 p.m.; the driver, Troy, was driving a black Mercedes—I’ll
never forget that detail. I got into the vehicle first, sitting in the
middle of the back seat. One of the students and her guide dog got in behind
the driver. One of the other students got in the passenger-side back seat on
my other side, and the third sat in the front seat.

The driver looked back as we were getting settled and asked, “Is that a
dog?” I remember thinking something snarky, like “No, it’s a whale.” But I
didn’t answer, because it wasn’t my service animal.

The student who was the handler said it was a guide dog. The driver, Troy,
immediately started fussing at us, stating at least twenty times that this
was a “sixty-thousand-dollar Mercedes.” The student calmly responded that
her dog was a service animal that was protected under the ADA.

Troy began shouting at us to get out of his car. He said that he had the
right to refuse to take whoever he wanted, and that we had to call Uber Pet.
We responded that service animals are not pets, and thus we did not have to
call Uber Pet.

The student with the guide dog and I decided we were not going to exit the
vehicle because the driver had an obligation to take us under the ADA. The
driver got out of the vehicle and began shouting in the street. This was a
quiet neighborhood, fairly upscale, and fairly quickly we attracted notice.

Meanwhile, the rest of our friends came out of the house, and there was once
again a gaggle of lawyers, this time standing on a Houston sidewalk nearing
midnight. What happened next seems surreal.

As the driver continued to shout about his sixty-thousand-dollar Mercedes,
both of the students on the passenger side of the vehicle decided to leave
the car. The student with the guide dog and I decided to stay.

Troy then opened the driver’s side back door, reached into the car, and
tried to physically yank the guide dog out of the car. The student was
holding onto the dog’s harness, but when Troy started using his might to try
to force the dog out of the vehicle, she wrapped her arms around the dog to
keep her from being pulled away from her. She began to shout at the driver
to stop pulling on her dog, that he was hurting the dog, and that she was a
service animal. Troy did not stop for several minutes. The student began to
slide out of the car herself because Troy was pulling on the dog so hard. I
wrapped my arms around the student to keep her from being pulled out of the
car. I believed if Troy was successful at forcing the guide dog or the
student from the car, they’d both fall on the ground and be hurt.

As I held onto the student, Troy started pulling on me too. He used so much
force that all three of us—the student, the guide dog, and I—were all
sliding slowly out of the car.

I also started shouting at Troy to stop pulling on us. Eventually, he took a
break and walked away from the car.

I called 911 to report a physical assault. They took my report and told me
someone from the Houston Police Department would come soon. They did not
stay on the phone with me like they show in the movies.

After I hung up with Emergency Services, I called Uber to file a complaint.
While I was on the phone with Uber Support, Troy came back and did it again.
He pulled, using all of his might, on the guide dog and the student to force
them out of the car. I had my arm around the student’s shoulder to comfort
her, so he pulled on me too. The Uber customer support person on the phone
did nothing except take the report.

After this second assault and battery, the guide dog was very agitated, and
the student was extremely upset. We didn’t know if the dog had been hurt,
and if so, how badly. The student decided to get out of the car so she could
have enough room to check out the dog and catch her breath. I stayed in the
vehicle, because I knew that if I also got out, the driver would just get in
the car and leave, resulting in no accountability for his actions.

I have to pause and give you a quick lesson in the law that you might or
might not already know. Assault is a crime—it is when someone takes an
action that places another in imminent fear of a battery. Battery means
unwanted physical touching. So, Troy both assaulted and battered the student
and me. To compound the issue, a guide dog, like a cane or wheelchair, is,
under the law, an extension of the person with a disability. That means that
if someone intentionally batters a guide dog while it is working, then
they’ve battered the human handler. When Troy grabbed the guide dog and
tried to forcibly remove her by pulling her from the car, and since the
student was holding the harness and then the dog, Troy battered and
assaulted the dog and the student. Then, when I tried to help her by
anchoring her and he grabbed and yanked on me, he battered and assaulted me
too.

They teach you about assault and battery literally on the first day of law
school, but as you’ll come to see, somehow two police departments and a
multi-national company don’t know what it is.

Apparently, in response to the commotion, one of the neighbors called their
local police department, which resulted in a faster response from Harris
County law enforcement compared with Houston PD. Two police officers from
Harris County arrived within twenty minutes of the incident. However, they
were not there to help! In fact, instead of helping the student and me, the
clear victims here, they nearly shot me—an unarmed brown woman.

After hanging up with Uber, I called Cayte Mendez, who serves as the chair
of the Scholarship Committee, to let her know that three scholarship
finalists and I were in the midst of an Uber denial that turned into an
assault, for which we were waiting for law enforcement intervention. I also
asked my lawyer friends standing on the sidewalk to call Eve Hill, NFB
General Counsel, who by that time had made it back to the hotel. Both Cayte
and Eve were on the phone with us when the next horrible thing happened.

Troy managed to get to the Harris County police officers before anyone else,
and as best as I can tell, he told them that he was afraid of me, that I
refused to leave his vehicle after he decided he didn’t feel “safe” driving
me, and that he believed I may have a weapon. He used incorrect and negative
stereotypes about brown and Muslim people, and they believed him.

Throughout this ordeal, my lawyer friends, including the homeowner, were
standing on the sidewalk, less than ten feet away from the car. When Harris
County police pulled up, the homeowner shared with us that Harris County
provides neighborhood support but that Houston police is the entity that
handles real crime. He shared that the Harris police provide a sort of
neighborhood watch function, similar to mall police.

As I sat in the back seat of the vehicle, with the windows open, talking to
Cayte on the phone, a female police officer slowly walked up to the car on
the right side. I learned later there was another police officer nearby
covering her. She shouted at me to put my hands where she could see them.
She did not identify herself, and I had no idea who she was or that she was
a cop. I was holding my phone in one hand and the other was empty. My cane
was telescoped on the floor at my feet. I was the only person left in the
vehicle.

For a bit of context: I’m brown, Muslim, a woman, and blind. I wear a
religious head covering called a hijab, which makes me very obviously Muslim
to the sighted. My family are refugees, and I’m a United States citizen.
Houston is much more open to immigrants and people of color than other
places in the southern United States, but I still harbor the same anxiety as
many immigrants and people of color do when visiting some of the southern
states. In fact, I carry my US passport in my bra at all times for my safety
so I can quickly prove I am a citizen.

I dropped the phone—I don’t know if I even said goodbye to Cayte or not—and
raised my hands. The officer then directed a very strong flashlight into my
face, which was incredibly startling. Once she saw me sitting there, she
began to speak very loudly and slowly, as though I didn’t comprehend the
English language.

As she continued to flash the light into my face, I told her that I was
blind and needed her to identify herself. She initially did not and
continued to speak to me in a loud, condescending voice. Eventually, she
moved the flashlight away from my face, and as I readjusted to the lighting,
I realized that she was gripping her weapon in her other hand. I was being
held at gunpoint by Harris County police simply for being blind, brown, and
Muslim.

She eventually told me she was Harris County police; I don’t know if she
ever told me her name or not. She asked me if I had a weapon. I told her I
did not. She asked me if anything was on the floor of the car. I told her,
once again, while she held me at gunpoint, that I was blind and that my cane
was on the floor at my feet. She asked me what else was on the floor, and I
told her that I did not know because I did not own the vehicle.

She did not ask me any questions or take my statement before deciding I was
the threat. I had called 911, but I was now the person with a gun on me.

She told me that since it wasn’t my vehicle, I was trespassing, and that the
“nice gentleman” had a right to kick anyone he wanted out of his car. I told
her that my friends and I were Uber passengers, that we had disabilities,
and that he had a legal obligation to transport us under the Americans with
Disabilities Act. Meanwhile, I was trying not to panic as she still held her
weapon on me.

She ordered me out of the vehicle and told me to keep my hands up at all
times. I told her once again that I was blind, that I needed my cane to
safely exit the vehicle, and that I’d like to retrieve it first. Initially,
she was not going to let me retrieve my cane, but at that point her fellow
officer walked up and told her that she should let me use it. He whispered
that everyone around the car had a cane, so I likely wasn’t making up my
blindness.

She shone the light on the floor of the vehicle to see that the cane was the
only item there, and she ordered me to pick it up with one hand while the
other was still raised. I did so.

She opened the door, and I slowly exited the vehicle, still holding my hands
up. I asked if I could retrieve my phone from the car, which was on the
seat, and the other officer got it and handed it to one of my friends.

The female Harris County police officer asked for my name—still in that
loud, slow tone—and I told it to her. She asked me for my driver’s license,
and I told her I didn’t drive. She responded, “Undocumented, I thought so.”
I replied that I had a valid ID, that I was a US citizen, and that I didn’t
have a driver’s license because I am blind. She ordered me to show her my
ID.

I began to move my hand toward my passport but quickly realized that given
how ignorant and suspicious this officer had been thus far, moving my hand
toward my chest rather than my purse would escalate the situation. I
verbally talked her through what I was doing. I was wearing a very small
cross-body purse, small enough to hold only my phone, a thin wallet, and my
AirPods.

I narrated everything I did before I physically did it. I told her I was
going to open the flap of my purse using just the thumb and forefinger on my
right hand. I told her I was going to reach in with those same fingers to
remove a pink wallet. I told her I was using those same two fingers to open
the wallet to show her my state ID. I handed over the wallet, and she looked
at it, then ordered me to remove the ID from the wallet and give it to her.
At this point, she appeared to me to holster her gun, and I gave her my ID.
I told her my passport was in my bra and asked if she wanted to see it. She
responded, “Not yet.”

As she took my ID from me, one of my friends told her that she should Google
me while she had my name and information. She ordered me to stay put and
went off to her vehicle, I assumed to run me through law enforcement
databases. I collapsed onto the ground, right there, at the side of the
road. My legs could not hold me up anymore.

At some point, my friends had begun recording the encounter, but I’m not
sure exactly when they began recording—I haven’t had the mental energy to
watch the video. Eve Hill was also on the phone for all or most of it. But
that wasn’t the end, not by a longshot.

While I waited to be run through all the law enforcement databases, my
friends filled me in on what I’d missed, including what they heard Troy tell
the Harris County officers. They also shared that several of them had showed
Harris County PD the Uber website that specifically states Uber’s
nondiscrimination policy and that denying service to service animal users
violates the law and Uber’s policies. Apparently, that wasn’t good enough
either.

We also realized that our host had a video surveillance system on his home
that likely captured the incident and its aftermath. In fact, the camera
footage shows the driver yanking on the dog, the student, and me both times
and much of the Harris County police department’s actions. The cell phone
recordings my friends took show much of the same with sound.

Eventually, the lady officer from Harris County returned, giving me back my
ID. She told me again that Troy was just a “nice man” who wanted to keep his
expensive vehicle clean. I responded that people with disabilities are not
dirty, and neither are our dogs. I also reiterated that the ADA prohibits
Uber drivers from refusing service to guide dog handlers and others with
disabilities. She said that Uber had to handle this. I told her I had filed
a complaint with Uber, but that since the driver assaulted and battered the
student and me, this was now a criminal issue as well, and that law
enforcement was required to enforce the antidiscrimination laws. The student
and I told her we wanted to press charges against the driver. She ordered me
to get the person from Uber with whom I filed the report on the phone. I
told her I’d try, but Uber has a lot of customer service people. I called
Uber, waited on hold, and eventually got connected to a different agent than
previously.

I told Uber I was calling because I was with law enforcement who wanted to
verify I’d called previously to file a report and to ask them questions.
Initially, the Uber representative informed me that they would not talk to
law enforcement. The female Harris County officer insisted, so I asked for a
supervisor. I eventually was transferred to a supervisor, I explained the
situation, and the supervisor agreed to talk to the police officer. This all
was on speaker phone, and what happened next was also on speaker phone.

The police officer asked if a driver has the right to refuse to drive
someone if they have a guide dog, and the Uber representative said, “Yes,
the driver can refuse to drive anyone they wish.” If I hadn’t already been
sitting on the ground, I’d have fallen over. This is a supposed supervisor
in the escalation department at Uber, and they don’t even know the law or
their own policies? We all, including Eve Hill on the phone, started
shouting that this was not true.

The police officer asked the phone representative from Uber to share the
policy that gives drivers the right to refuse anyone, which frankly stunned
me because I didn’t think that Harris County officer was capable of getting
to actual true facts. The Uber representative put us on hold, and after
about ten minutes, returned and read from the website that my friends had
previously shown the officer, which said the exact opposite of what the
representative had originally said.

At no time did Harris County take my statement or anyone else’s. At no time
did they gather evidence or try to figure out what happened. They took a
cursory look at the dog and said, “She looks fine to me.” They told us this
was a civil matter and to work through Uber. We reiterated we were assaulted
and battered and wanted to press charges, and they reiterated that we and
the dog weren’t physically hurt from their perspective, thus this was a
civil matter.

At that point, about two and a half hours after the incident began, Houston
PD finally showed up. This was a vastly different experience from Harris
County. The responding Houston PD officers took our individual statements,
understood that the driver could not refuse services to passengers with
guide dogs, and treated us with dignity and respect. They also told Harris
County PD they had it from there and sent the Harris County officers away.

We told them we had recordings and showed them to Houston PD. Nonetheless,
they, too, did not immediately press charges or allow us to do so. They
informed us that their local prosecutor would review the reports and videos
and make a determination within a few days. They obtained Troy’s contact
information and released him. Roughly three and a half hours after the
ordeal began, we returned to the hotel. A few days later, Houston PD
informed us that the local prosecutor had declined to bring criminal charges
against Troy.

Meanwhile, I supplemented my report to Uber to add additional details. Three
days after Uber nearly got me killed by Harris County PD, they kicked me off
the Uber platform. Apparently, in an effort to try to save his job with
Uber, Troy filed a complaint against me, stating I threatened him and had a
weapon in his vehicle. This was in direct retaliation for my complaint
against him. Though my supplemental report to Uber explained how Troy lied
to law enforcement and the effect, Uber still, without ever talking to me or
doing any sort of investigation, suspended my account. This is a gross
injustice, because if anyone who complains is subject to retaliatory
suspension, then every person with a disability who tries to protect their
rights, as described by the law and Uber’s own policy, will be removed from
the platform simply for exercising their rights.

I shared what had happened with President Riccobono, and he contacted Uber
himself. Uber executives were at the convention, and President Riccobono
arranged a meeting for those executives, John Paré, the scholarship
finalists and me. Uber made a lot of promises and commitments, but more than
a year later, I’ve not seen any of them come to fruition.

I filed two complaints with the [United States] Department of Justice (DOJ)
about this experience—one against Harris County Police, and the other
against Uber. DOJ closed the complaint against Harris County Police with no
action. I have not yet heard any information about the Uber complaint.

What happened to my companions and me isn’t rare. There isn’t a week that
goes by that I don’t hear from someone about a rideshare denial because of
their guide dog or long white cane. These denials mean that blind people are
late for work, medical appointments, worship services, and so on. The fact
that Uber personnel didn’t know the law, or their own policies is
unforgivable. The fact that law enforcement doesn’t know the law is
disgusting and terrifying.  

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