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Lyft has gone bad from the start once Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty ordered a pickup from the ilani Casino Resort in Washington last week.
Hardesty was upset with confusion about where she was waiting for the car, then she didn’t want the windows open for ventilation because she was cold, then she didn’t want to get out when the driver interrupted the ride and tried to let her down. at a gas station miles from your home.
The Nov. 1 trip ended with dueling 911 calls and a request from Hardesty for the police to respond even though a dispatcher told him no crime had been committed..
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The encounter shines a light on Hardesty at a time when the veteran politician has been working to divert money from the Portland Police Department’s budget and attempting to find alternatives to relieve police from dealing with a flood of 911 reports on scenarios n ‘involving no crimes. Hardesty oversees Portland’s emergency dispatch system.
The commissioner did not respond to comments for comment, but her office released a copy of a complaint Hardesty sent to Lyft.
She said the driver was angry and blamed her for the misunderstanding at the pickup location. She wrote that it was “totally inappropriate to expect a woman to get out of a vehicle in the middle of the night”.
Both emergency calls are documented in Clark County dispatch records and audio obtained by The Oregonian / OregonLive via a public recording request.
Richmond Frost of Beaverton, a four-year Lyft driver who has handled more than 18,000 rides, said he didn’t realize his fare was hardesty until it was all over. He said he was now concerned about the publicity and how it might affect his Lyft license.
“She wasn’t a nice person,” Frost said. “It has nothing to do with her political standing as a Portland board member. I do my job here. She was very disrespectful to me, made me uncomfortable. I didn’t. the feeling of having to sit in a car so that anyone has to argue tirelessly and be rude and abusive, telling me what to do in my own vehicle.
Frost’s account begins when he said he was compensating a fare in Vancouver and accepted a pickup request from a customer named “Jo Ann”.
He drove about 25 minutes north of the Ridgefield Casino and parked at the main entrance. He said he had waited five minutes without any sign of his price. So he called her.
“It went south from there,” Frost said. “She was not happy. She didn’t understand where I was.
He soon figured out that Hardesty was waiting for him at a side entrance and drove to meet her there.
Once in his car, Hardesty was disturbed that he was having trouble finding her, he said. He grabbed his phone from the binder on his dashboard and showed her where the pin indicated its location, but that didn’t seem to allay his displeasure, he said.
“I just wanted to calm her down, make her understand that I’m not a rookie. I know what I’m doing, ”Frost said. “She didn’t want to hear any of that. She just wasn’t happy with it.
As he began to drive out of the casino, Hardesty told him that he needed to roll the windows, that she couldn’t roll with them.
The car’s windows on the front driver’s side and on the front passenger’s side have been cracked to allow airflow as security due to the coronavirus pandemic, he said. According to Lyft’s website, the company’s new rules for the road during the pandemic recommend keeping car windows open.
He rolled the windows slightly but kept them open a bit, telling Hardesty that the windows were open for safety reasons since they couldn’t be spaced six feet apart in the confined space of his car.
“I said, ‘This is for my safety and your safety.’ But it was like pouring gas on your fire, ”Frost said. “She demanded that I close that window now. She was pretty ballistic at the time.
He parked on Interstate 5 south but decided to take the next exit when he said Hardesty would not let go by demanding he close the windows.
“So I made a decision, it would be in the best interest of both of us to cancel the race,” said Frost. He took the first exit south of Ridgefield. He spotted a Chevron west of the highway and stopped there.
“It’s lit like a football field. It’s certain. It’s hot. She could order another Lyft or Uber, whatever she wants to do, and I can be done, and I can continue with my work, ”he said.
But Hardesty’s anger boiled over. Frost said she told him, “‘Well, no, you’re either going to take me back to the casino or you’re going to take me to my destination,'” he recalls. Hardesty, he said, told her that she had already paid for the ride, but Frost said he canceled the trip and no money was exchanged.
He said he got closer to front door to the gas station convenience store, but Hardesty didn’t want to get out of his black 2019 Hyundai Ioniq four-door.
Frost asked him if he should call the police to have her fired and she told him to continue, he said.
Then Hardesty herself dialed 911 at 9:48 p.m. from the back seat.
When asked what her emergency was, she replied, “Well I have a Lyft driver who decided he would just drop me off at a gas station. Well, I don’t get out of the car, in the dark, at a gas station, that doesn’t happen – all because I asked him to put the glass up. I do not go.”
She said there was no violence. No weapon was involved.
“He says I have to get out of his car, otherwise he would call the police, so I decided to call him,” she continued.
The dispatcher repeatedly told Hardesty that what she was describing was not a crime, that it was a civil matter, noting that the car was owned by the driver. Hardesty has always asked the police to respond.
“I’m not going to allow him to leave me on the side of the road,” she said.
The driver can be heard in the background telling the dispatcher that he is not on the side of a road.
“I paid for a ride. He says he canceled it, “Hardesty said.” So I’m going to sit here until he sends me another ride. “
The dispatcher asked Hardesty, “Do you understand that only you can order another ride?”
“I won’t move until another car comes along,” Hardesty said.
The expedition record indicated that she would not go out “because it was cold and she was a woman and alone.”
A section of the 911 dispatch record of the November 1 calls from Jo Ann Hardesty and Driver Lyft of Ridgefield, Washington.
As the two men silently waited in the car for the police to arrive, Frost decided to call the police himself to register his own complaint.
He said he was a carpool driver, canceled a customer’s ride and she refused to get out of her car. The dispatcher quickly realized that his call was related to the one just received, which is confirmed by shipping records. The dispatcher said a police car would be dispatched but hijacked in an emergency.
A Ridgefield-marked police car with two officers pulled up behind them at 9:57 p.m. as another Lyft driver also arrived.
Frost got out of his car and told the police what had happened from his perspective.
“It was just a race that didn’t work. It was not going well. I thought it was better to cancel the ride, start over and reset, ”Frost told police. “I didn’t see the point of sitting in the vehicle with that kind of tension and upsetting the customer for 35 minutes.”
Frost said he didn’t notice any signs of intoxication or the smell of alcohol from Hardesty. There was no reference to poisoning in the shipping records. He said Hardesty was wearing a mask.
When a policeman approached the rear passenger door, Hardesty exited. She eventually got into the other Lyft, which she had previously ordered for a ride home, according to shipping records.
“Peace restored and the parties involved have separated,” reads a 10:16 pm entry on the expedition report.
The same night of her Lyft ride from the Ilani Casino, Jo Ann Hardesty wrote a complaint to Lyft, calling her driver “an angry person”.
Later that night, Hardesty sent a complaint to Lyft.
“I requested a ride, the driver came to the wrong place. He then blamed me. “She wrote.” I asked him to roll the window to my side and he started shouting, ‘I can’t because the regulations require every window to be cracked (which is not true). He then pulled up in the dark at the side of a gas station and told me he was canceling the ride. I had no interest in being left on the side of the road by an angry driver. He threatened (sic) to call the police. I called the police and another car. Both arrived at the same time. It is totally inappropriate to expect a woman to get out of a vehicle in the middle of the night because any angry person demands it. It is a security concern for your client. Your driver was not in danger.
A member of a Lyft security team identified as Garry replied to Hardesty: “As a reminder, drivers are free to end a trip for any reason as long as the deposit is in a safe place. Safety is our priority. We take these matters very seriously. We encourage everyone who uses Lyft to be respectful of others. It helps maintain a safe and inclusive community. “
The Chevron station convenience store closed at 10 p.m., but the station’s night lights remain on as pumps are available by credit card 24 hours a day, a clerk said.
Frost, 63, who has lived in the Metro Portland area for 51 years, says he got back in his car and drove off after Hardesty got out of the backseat. Once back on I-5 South, he pulled over and called a Lyft help line to report the canceled trip.
It was only when he recounted what had happened and reported the passenger’s full name – which he had heard her give to the police – that he admitted that Hardesty was the commissioner of the city of Portland, he said.
“She was just another passenger,” he said. “I treat everyone the same. I try to be professional.
– Maxine Bernstein
Email to [email protected]; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @ maxoregonian
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