Gig workers fear carjacking, other violence amid spike in violence crimes

Just before Christmas last year, Willy Solis, a 42-year-old residential construction worker-turned-delivery driver, was hired to take a late-night $100 bottle of cognac to an apartment complex in Denton, Texas. Once Solis found the apartment, he met a stocky man who gave a name that not only didn’t match the ID he showed, but it also wasn’t the name of the person who placed the order. Confused, Solis called Instacart’s phone support line.

Solis said that that angered the customer and his three male friends and that they ordered him to hand over the cognac. Even though he had qualms about it, Solis, under the direction of the Instacart supervisor who was still on the phone, gave them the bottle.

Solis sped off in his 2018 Nissan Sentra before the situation escalated. It wasn’t the only recent time he had felt unsafe. Solis, who has worked for DoorDash, Shipt, Grubhub and other gig economy companies, said he also delivered to an apartment in Haltom City, outside Fort Worth, where a female Uber Eats driver was murdered in January.

Solis said that since then, he has stopped working after 9 p.m. and has considered carrying a gun. But he fears that if he violates gig companies’ rules not to carry firearms, he could risk losing his job.

“I’m very fearful every time I go out,” said Solis, who makes $800 to $1,000 a week before expenses and taxes. “I don’t want to lose my life over a $100 bottle of cognac or a fast food order.”

Solis has considered carrying a gun.Nitashia Johnson / for NBC News

Solis is one of 15 gig economy workers who spoke with NBC News and said they feared for their safety as violence against the industry has spiked during the coronavirus pandemic. Police in several major cities, including Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., say carjackings and car thefts, particularly against gig economy drivers, rose during the pandemic.

Some drivers say that despite the companies’ best efforts, they are changing their hours, avoiding certain areas and even carrying weapons, like wasp spray, Mace, Tasers and firearms, to protect themselves.

“As the danger grows more and more, that’s what’s pushing me more towards the possibility of doing it,” Solis said about carrying a gun.

It’s a pattern that especially affects minorities working in the lower-paying jobs, said Veena Dubal, a professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, who has extensively researched the taxi industry and the gig economy.

“A lot of these workers are subordinated racial minorities, and they are likely to bear the brunt of physical violence, because they are in public doing this kind of work,” she said.

The problems have become widespread enough that the major tech companies have been stepping up to address them. Uber recently instituted safety measures to protect drivers, including more verification requirements for people who set up accounts with gift cards or other anonymous payment systems.

DoorDash spokesperson Campbell Matthews said in an email that the company is “deeply troubled by reports of increased crime” and that it intends to add an “emergency assistance button into the Dasher app to help connect Dashers to emergency services.”

In a statement, Grubhub spokesperson Grant Klinzman echoed Matthews’ remarks, saying the safety of the company’s drivers “is our top priority” and that the company was “ready to support law enforcement investigations … as they take steps to address the unacceptable spike in vehicle thefts.”

Lyft spokesperson Ashley Adams said that the company considers safety to be “fundamental” and that “we are working closely with law enforcement to help keep drivers safe.”

Instacart expressed similar concerns but said it hadn’t “seen an increase in carjackings or assault towards shoppers.”

“We take the safety and security of the entire Instacart community very seriously,” Natalia Montalvo, a company spokesperson, said by email. “Shoppers have many resources available to them to ensure their safety and protection while shopping and delivering on the Instacart platform.”

Rising crime

The attacks on drivers, which appear to have started last year, may be part of a larger trend of a rise in violent crime in major cities, according to research in November by the Police Executive Research Forum.

Chicago police found that there were 424 carjackings from January through March, more than double the 198 carjackings the same time last year. In San Diego, carjackings more than doubled last year, to 97, from 44 in 2019. In Minneapolis, carjackings also more than doubled, to 97, in the first three months of the year, compared to 39 in the first three months of last year. In Washington, carjackings more than quadrupled in the first quarter of this year from the first quarter of last year, to 102.

Such growth has happened elsewhere, too. In Cincinnati, 38 vehicles were stolen from Jan. 1 through March 20 in the “CUF” neighborhood near the University of Cincinnati. Emily Szink, a police spokesperson, said “many of those cars were left running and were delivery drivers,” estimating them to be two-thirds of the 38 reports, or about 26.

But the spikes aren’t universal: Police in Sacramento, California; Phoenix; Lansing, Michigan; and Dallas say they haven’t seen such rises. It isn’t clear why some cities are experiencing more of this type of crime than others.

Even before the rise in violent crime against gig workers, being a delivery driver was identified as one of the most dangerous jobs in America — typically as a result of traffic accidents — according to an analysis last year of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.

Last month alone, several high-profile events shook the gig worker community. In New York City, Francisco Villalva Vitinio, a DoorDash delivery worker, was killed after he refused to give up his e-bike, which he needed for work, to would-be robbers. Authorities said Mohammad Anwar, 66, an Uber Eats driver, died at the hands of two teenage girls who investigators said used a stun gun on him in Washington. Days earlier, in Chicago, Javier Ramos, an Uber driver, was shot in the head and killed; police said his killer was a passenger he had picked up after 3 a.m.

Child kidnappings

On Feb. 6, Jeffrey Fang, 39, a DoorDash driver in San Francisco, left his silver Honda Odyssey minivan running while he made a delivery — leaving inside his 4-year-old daughter and his 2-year-old son, who speak only Mandarin. When he returned, he found a strange man sitting in the driver’s seat.

source: nbcnews.com