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Eavesdropping Uber Driver Helps Rescue 16-Year-Old From Her Pimps (washingtonpost.com)
Slashdot reader sabri writes "In California, an Uber driver saved a 16 year old girl from human traffickers after he overheard them talk about delivering the girl to a customer." The Washington Post reports:
Uber driver Keith Avila picked up a passenger who looked like a 12-year-old girl in a short skirt Monday night. That was the first sign that something was off, he would say later. Two women got into his car with the girl outside a house in Sacramento. Halfway to their destination -- a Holiday Inn in Elk Grove, California -- they asked Avila to turn up the music, he said. Then the women turned to the girl. Avila listened in.
"They were describing what they were going to do when they get there: 'Check for guns. Get the money before you start touching up on the guy,'" Avila said on Facebook Live minutes after he dropped off the passengers, then called police to report the women whom he suspected of prostituting the child. The girl was 16, not 12, Elk Grove police told local news outlets. But Avila's suspicions were right, they said. The teen was being sold for sex at the Holiday Inn, and her eavesdropping Uber driver had saved her.
The teen girl was returned to her family, while the two women with her were charged with multiple felonies. The driver had only joined Uber a few weeks earlier, but his Facebook Live video from outside his fare's house has now been viewed more than 240,000 times.
"They were describing what they were going to do when they get there: 'Check for guns. Get the money before you start touching up on the guy,'" Avila said on Facebook Live minutes after he dropped off the passengers, then called police to report the women whom he suspected of prostituting the child. The girl was 16, not 12, Elk Grove police told local news outlets. But Avila's suspicions were right, they said. The teen was being sold for sex at the Holiday Inn, and her eavesdropping Uber driver had saved her.
The teen girl was returned to her family, while the two women with her were charged with multiple felonies. The driver had only joined Uber a few weeks earlier, but his Facebook Live video from outside his fare's house has now been viewed more than 240,000 times.
"Careless idiots overheard planning a criminal act. Person overhearing them called the police!"
If this is what counts as news today I guess we've got everything under control.
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Prostitution is just Uber for sex.
You are welcome on my lawn.
they've been getting a lot of criticism about being used for criminal activities (natch, they're a perfect vector for it) so they needed something like this. It'll get a lot of air time in the press as a result.
I'm glad the girl got rescued, but whenever I hear these stories I always think, what now? It's not like the systemic problems that lead her down that path are just going to vanish...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm entirely happy he did the right thing,
I suppose it makes no difference since the girl was saved. Why turn it into a political commercial?
Certainly people who were not Trump supporters would have done the same thing.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
No one says that Uber drivers are not hardworking and conscientious. The issue is with the Uber system that passes the cost of the business model onto the lowest paid person in the chain.
whatever. nit pick if you want.
bottom line uber guy did the right thing, namely he didn't look the other way.
Just because Uber is involved this is "news"? And almost a week late at that? This is not "news for nerds", sorry.
You are assuming that she is indeed "prostituting herself" rather than being sold . The story and outcome makes it sound like the second possibility is the reality here...
I'm astounded that you'd blame the victim here ("turn around and do the same thing next week.") She was apparently a vulnerable person who was actively exploited by these two women. She had been reported missing by her family. Whether she ran away or was kidnapped doesn't really change the fact she was exploited, which is wrong and illegal.
Posting to facebook live astounds me, but come on, the guy did the right thing. Most people would just walk away. Kudos to him for acting, regardless of which taxi company he was working for. Sure if it wasn't uber or didn't involve facebook life, it wouldn't be on slashdot. I agree with you that this story doesn't really belong on Slashdot.
Eesh man. I think I understand what you're suggesting, but give the guy a break for doing the right thing.
Perhaps FB Live was the handiest option to document what was going down? Once he had his proof, he was able to do something about it. You seem to think this was a case of "ready fire aim" but it worked.
Go and see the Facebook live video. The cops were already there on the video and he only made the video because the cops told him to stay because they would like a second statement from him
Did the Uber driver also investigate what it was about this girl's life that led her to prostitute herself in the first place and remove those conditions so that she won't just turn around and do the same thing next week?
Yeah, the two pimps went to jail. The harder it becomes to sell your daughter into this kind of situation, the less likely it will be to happen.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If you are seriously trying to justify the motives and actions of people who engage in human trafficking, there is clearly not enough of a common denominator between us in our values and standards to engage in any kind of useful discussion
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You think underage prostitution being caught wont make the news? Do you even think of the children bro?
The child sex trafficking in Rotherham went on for at least six years, precisely because the authorities and news suppressed any mention of it. You see, the perpetrators were immigrants, and better to kill the story than be a racist (since anyone who calls immigrants rapists is just a racist). Yes, that really happened. Yes, 1400 children were abused. Yes, that was really the reason it went on so long.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's bizarre enough that the age of consent in most states is years older than the majority of people become sexually active
Which is for a good reason. In my former home country, the age of consent used to be 12. Yes, I kid you not. Once a female human being turned 12 years old, she could legally be humped by a 70 year old grandpa. It was raised to 16 in the late 90s, with one exception: any form of paid services required both participants to be at least 18 years (prostitution is legal there).
And of course, which male would not want to hump that tight 16 year old's body? Who hasn't walked around in the summer, looking at a hot chick only to realize 3 seconds later that she's only 15? That's the problem: young girls are physically grown to completion, with a nice c-cup and bubble-butt, when they're mentally not ready to consent to a sexual relationship with an adult male. That's why you need a legal framework to protect them.
Also, don't forget that a lot of these laws were introduced at a time where contraception was not generally available, so the actual age of consent was derived from when a female was deemed fit to take care of a baby.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Nobody is "being sold" for sex these days except in exceptionally rare circumstances. It does not work economically. The Mafia gave up forced-prostitution a long time ago for that reason. In the rare circumstances where it still happens, the first customer is usually the one to call the police. (Well, not in the US obviously, but in decent countries where prostitution is legal, that is how it goes.)
This thing basically shows the deranged fantasies of the "rescuers". More likely than not, this young lady was in it of her own free will. And guess what, 16 year olds can make decisions about their lives and are not in any form "children" (except in those deranged fantasies...).
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Really you need a citation! This is well know fact and the wikipedia page is a good jumping off point if you are not aware of what was going on. Oh and for the record it was not confined to just this city, but also manu other British cities where men of mainly a Muslim background abused young girls of an almost exclusively white ethnic background.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal
Well, having worked a number of years in IT, one thing I noticed is that people tend to unconsciously treat IT-related workers as if they were mindless machines.
The irony of course is people ought to be more careful around machines these days. It boggles my mind that people literally pay for devices that eavesdrop on them at home. What's more it bothers me that smart phones don't have removable batteries anymore. It's only a matter of time before they start collecting information about us even when they are supposedly "off". Snowden has already revealed that the NSA can fake you into thinking your phone is off.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As I said, "deranged fantasies". You are guilty of those.
The number should already give anybody with two braincells to rub together a clue: There is no way for 100'000 children with an average age of 12-14 in the US to be forced into prostitution. There are only about 3.5 million children of that age-range (it does not get any better with an understanding of what "average" means, the author of that propaganda-piece has none), hence that would mean one in 35 is forced into prostitution. Now that would be a bit more noticeable, would it? (Well, "massively more noticeable" would be the right term.) And at an _average_ age of 12-14? That is nothing but an utterly perverted fantasy. This would mean loads of of children would be forced into it at 1-12 years old, otherwise you do not get an average this low. Now, assume these on average 13 year olds stay in prostitution until they are 18 (well, as long as they are "children"). That would mean you have at the very least 600'000 underage persons in forced prostitution. So, where are these? Aybody? Right, THEY DO NOT EXIST!
Actual prostitutes in the US are estimated by reliable sources as 23 per 100'000. That is around 90'000. For these, the average age they start is 23. Hence the number of children forced into prostitution on average at 13 (!) years of age would be 7 times greater than the legal one. That is simply preposterous and can only be an extreme lie. It is truly amazing how gullible people are. The perverted fantasies will certainly play a role here.
And here is another number: Apparently, there are only about 38'000 missing persons under 18 per year in the US. Now, if _all_ of them are forced into prostitution (which is most certainly not the case by a very large margin), you are still missing 62'000. Think they are all "disappeared" magically without anybody noticing or forced into prostitution by their parents? Or by random strangers, and basically no one of them tells their parents? The gross stupidity of such a claim is staggering.
Also, if there really were these many children forced into prostitution on average at 13 years of age, this story would not be news at all because they would be found everywhere all the time with these numbers. One 16 years old already making the news is proof that this is very rare indeed.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Now, assume these on average 13 year olds stay in prostitution until they are 18
No. I will not make idiotic assumptions with you. If they're only prostituted once, they've been "forced into prostitution". Hope this helps you understand where you went full retard.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It sounds to me like this wasn't "human trafficking". If they said they put her on a plane to say Thailand or Burma or maybe some poor Eastern European country that would be human trafficking. This was just prostitution. It appears that 'human trafficking' is a new phrase that is intended to make all forms of prostitution sound worse than they really are. The truth is that there are a lot prostitutes who want to be doing exactly and you can 'reunite them with their families' as many times as you want and the next day they will be having sex for money again. Why? Because it's an easy and high paying job in pretty much every country in the world.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
What's more it bothers me that smart phones don't have removable batteries anymore. It's only a matter of time before they start collecting information about us even when they are supposedly "off". Snowden has already revealed that the NSA can fake you into thinking your phone is off.
I think that time has already passed. It freaks me out that we all have supercomputers symbiotically attached to our persons. Not only all of the data and information we pump though them which is subsequently analyzed and reverse-engineered, but also how that access fundamentally changes our social structures, the way we view the world, our own self importance; literally our whole lens of reality is distorted in proximity to these devices.
Unceasing surveillance, diabolical in depth, indiscriminate in breadth. Using your own words and actions against you, refining plans for complete stimulus/response control: a consumptive device allowing greater avenues to consumption and dedicated to finding ways to increase future consumption.
I have found it very helpful to envision my cell phone as the Eye of Sauron.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Incidentally, here are a few a few harder numbers
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
They are form a study done by the DoJ. Unfortunately the link to the DoJ is broken and I cannot be bothered to find the document, but there is no reason the Washington Post would make numbers like these up.
They have 4'500-21'000 underage persons working in the sex trade in the US, with an average age of entry at 15.8. Only 15% have a "pimp", i.e. if you assume each pimp forces his girls into prostitution (extremely unlikely, most of those with a "pimp" will still be in it of their own free will), you get a maximum of 675-3150 underage persons forced into the sex trade overall. This nicely shows that the "100'000 children forced into the sex trade each year in the US" numbers are massively bogus and nothing but an outrageous lie.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.