Gig driver mauled by K-9 after missing car rental payments
Associated Press
January 5, 2022
Aftermath of a K-9 bite ... This man received an apology and settlement from the City of St. Paul
SAN FRANCISCO -- A gig driver badly mauled by a police dog is suing a San Francisco area suburb, alleging use of excessive force and violation of civil rights when police stopped him in December 2020 after he had missed car rental payments.
Dashboard and body-camera videos obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle show an unresisting Ali Badr wailing in pain, his arm in the teeth of an aggressive San Ramon police dog for more than a minute as officers tried to cuff him.
“I never do nothing,” Badr yelled to officers, the videos show. “I never in my life do anything.”
Badr, a 42-year-old resident of Oakland, has driven for Uber and Lyft and started delivering food for DoorDash when the pandemic hit, the news outlet reported. Forced to give up his own car due to declining income, he agreed to rent a Toyota Camry owned by startup CarMommy, which caters to gig workers, according to the lawsuit.
He told The Chronicle that he fell behind on payments, but told the company he would pay them shortly. It was something he had done before, he said. But CarMommy CEO and cofounder John Blomeke had reported the car stolen, said Matthew Haley, Badr’s attorney, resulting in the car’s license plate number being listed in a state Department of Justice database shared among agencies.
Badr was driving to work at a gas station when the plate triggered one of the city's license plate readers, alerting police of a vehicle reported as stolen. Officers in a half-dozen cars pulled him over, guns drawn and dog barking. He ended up being rushed to the hospital for surgery.
San Ramon Police Chief Craig Stevens told the news outlet in an email that the department conducted an internal investigation into the arrest of Badr, but declined to answer other questions citing the lawsuit.
Badr filed a federal lawsuit last month against the city of San Ramon, its police chief, and several police officers. He is also suing CarMommy, Blomeke, and HyreCar Inc. of Los Angeles, which brokered the rental.
HyreCar, San Ramon’s city attorney, CarMommy and Blomeke did not return messages from the Chronicle seeking comment.
2 comments:
This is why my DA stopped filing charges on Rental Car stolen hits. The DA considered them to be civil contract matters and did not want Law Enforcement involved in repossessing cars. The problem is that a stolen hit is a stolen hit so the Felony Stop is still in play. My guess is that a rule for NCIC will have to be made for Rental Car Stolens that can warn officers of the type of entry. The second verse to this is that organized crime gangs use Rental Cars to commit offenses. This prevents a vehicle seizure that would likely happen with a privately owned car being used in a crime.
The new way to rent cars is through companies like Turo, Peer to Peer and My Car Your Rental where the vehicle owner rents out their cars on consignment. I predict criminals will flock to these kinds of rental arrangements. CarMommy is simply a used car lot in San Jose that also rents the cars it sells. I'm sure each car has a $25 tracker on it so they can be retrieved. These companies put up a bond through an insurance company for damages, but the total amount will be the state minimum of approximately $25,000. So, nobody will be getting rich on a civil suit.
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