Many drivers who drive for Uber have voiced concerns over suspicious packages that they are having to deliver or that are left behind. For example, one package was a bag of white stuff with a cigar box wrapped tightly with tape, or a bottle of pills – something you’d expect to see in a modern television show or movie.
Drivers for Uber’s courier service don’t necessarily have the foggiest idea what’s inside the questionable-looking packages or bottles that individuals request that they deliver — however some realize they would rather not be a part of it let alone involved. According to other news outlets, there were six drivers from around the U.S. along with, Australia who said they are concerned they’re being utilized as unwitting “drug mules,” shipping across town what they believe might be opiates while delivering for Uber Connect, a courier service the tech organization began right on queue during the covid pandemic.
It’s difficult to determine whether a suspicious package contains drugs or not. What’s more, that leaves drivers in a bind: Drive the bundles to the police, or continue to make the delivery? Kyle Brock said he was driving for Uber in Plateau, Arizona, last year when a Uber Associate client requested a package delivery starting with one motel and then onto another motel at 1 a.m.
“The package was just a grocery bag with the most random and worthless stuff in it,” he said in an interview, but we all know how drugs can be smuggled across the border in the shape of inanimate objects or hidden inside groceries.
There was a pen, a few sweets, and a container about the size of two decks of cards shrouded in an unnecessary amount of tape. He speculated there were drugs inside the case, yet Uber disallows drivers from messing with a package, so he didn’t pry.
“I dropped off the package with quite a bit of dread,” he said. An anxious-looking individual claimed the pack, he said, and Brock quit driving for Uber soon after.
In January, Chicago police seized a Band-aid box with suspected narcotics after a Uber Connect driver told an officer she opened it and found what she believed to be meth. What’s more, a sheriff’s office in Tampa sent a crystalized substance to a Florida state lab for testing after a Uber Associate driver turned it over in April. Uber itself said it had gotten six data requests from authorities associated with suspected findings of drugs and Uber Connect starting around 2021, albeit the organization said that getting such a request doesn’t guarantee or affirm its administration was utilized to move opiates.
While it’s not presently clear how frequently drugs are being delivered via Uber’s package delivery service, it’s a sizzling topic in online forums and social media for drivers. On websites like Reddit, for example, which doesn’t require confirmation if someone is an employee, individuals have considered what difficult situation they could get in assuming that police pulled them over or on the other hand in the event that a furious client figured out they revealed a bundle to the police.
It’s not clear the number of cases authorities have examined concerning opiates being delivered using Uber Connect, other than those in Chicago and Florida’s Hillsborough District. Police in Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., said they hadn’t known about it. A representative in San Francisco said they had no data presently accessible. Representatives in other cities including Miami and New York City didn’t answer demands for input, and a representative for the Drug Enforcement Administration declined to make any statements or comment on the matter. In December, Uber said its delivery service was accessible in 6,000 cities and towns in the U.S.
This story syndicated with permission from For the Love of News