CHICAGO — A rideshare drivers’ union is warning its members about a trend where drivers have been the target of robberies in Chicago in recent weeks.
“People have been frightened away from doing this job,” said Lenny Sanchez, Director of the Independent Drivers Guild of Illinois (IDGI). “We have seen many people state that the risk and reward is no longer worth it.”
The Chicago Police Department issued a community alert Monday morning about a rash of such robberies targeting rideshare drivers on the South Side.
According to CPD, at least a dozen robberies have happened on South Crandon and South Exchange Avenues in the city’s South Shore neighborhood, where one-to-two male customers enter a rideshare driver’s vehicle and one of them asks to use the driver’s phone to make a call.
The offenders then flee the vehicle on foot, but during three of the robberies, one of the male customers showed the driver they had a gun and demanded their cell phone before they fled the scene on foot.