You can add one more bad Uber ride to your list. Only this time, it's the driver with the horror story.
Detective Patrick Cherry, a New York City police officer assigned to the city's special terrroism task force, was caught on tape going on a racist rant against an Uber driver who objected to the officer's bad driving etiquette.
It all started when Sanjay Seth, a passenger in a New York City Uber uploaded a video titled "Police Abuse of Uber Driver in New York City - March 30, 2015." In the video, Cherry can be seen shouting at the driver, mocking his accent, and at one point asking him, "How long have you been in this country?”
Cherry was not in uniform when he started the confrontation. The Uber driver honked his horn when Cherry blocked traffic to park without using signals. He did not write the driver a ticket.
The passengers in the car can also be seen comforting the driver after Cherry storms off. "This guy's just a dick," one of them says.
The New York Daily News reported that the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau would investigate the incident, but that Cherry did not break any laws. The city's Civilian Complaint Review Board will now deal with the issue, New York's NBC affiliate reported Wednesday.
An Uber spokesman confirmed to the New York Daily News that the driver had reported the incident. The driver's name has not been released.
New York City police officers have been repeatedly caught on video behaving badly in a wide variety of circumstances, from one officer pepper-spraying handcuffed protesters at an Occupy Wall Street rally in 2011 to the widely protested killing of Staten Island man Eric Garner in August of 2014.
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said Wednesday afternoon that Cherry will be transferred from his task force post, according to ABC News.
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