Admit it, now: when you learned that Kiefer Sutherland had been arrested, you thought, as I did, “Ah HA! I always suspected that guy wasn’t acting when he played those evil characters in “Stand By Me,” “A Time to Kill,” “The Lost Boys”and “Eye for an Eye.” He didn’t fool me by playing good guys and heroes since “24”!”
Today the reports are that the actor threatened to kill an Uber driver. He had ordered an Uber Black (What the hell is an “Uber Black”? Is Uber like Johnny Walker now?) after having dinner with a friend, or so law enforcement sources told TMZ. When the late Donald Sutherland’s son asked the driver to pull over and let him out, the driver wouldn’t, and after the third request, Sutherland threatened to kill him if he didn’t do as he asked. The driver phoned 911 for assistance, and requested a translator when the police showed up. The police then requested a Russian or Armenian-speaking translator.
What the hell?
The driver did not allege an injury, so Sutherland was arrested on suspicion of making felony criminal threats. He was released on a $50,000 bail, and has a February 2 court date.
When I was reading the account, I thought, “This sounds like a big misunderstanding.” After I finished it and learned that the Uber driver needed a translator, I thought, “No wonder there was a misunderstanding!” I also marveled, not for the first time, at how often companies (I’m looking at YOU, customer service lines) irresponsibly hire non- or barely-English speakers in jobs requiring English fluency.
For an Uber driver, the inabiity to communicate with a customer is even more inexcusable than at the McDonalds Drive-Thru. I imagine this scene….
Sutherland: Pull over, I need to get out.
Driver: “Eh?”
Sutherland: I said, “Pull over, I need to get out”!
Driver: “Uh?”
Sutherland: Dammit! PULL OVER YOU ASSHOLE! I NEED TO GET OUT!
Driver: “[Unintelligible]”
Sutherland: IF YOU DON’T STOP THE CAR, I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!!!!!
I can understand losing one’s temper when a car you are riding in as a passenger won’t stop when you require it to. Uber, Lyft and cab drivers—Hmmm, what other jobs? Are there 911 dispatchers who can’t understand English?— should be required by law to possess basic English proficiency.
Ethics Alarms 
So, in this scenario, the only thing Sutherland said that the driver understood was the threat?
That’s convenient.
I’ve had customer service experience in the past. It’s not unusual for customers for whom English is a second language to speak and understand the language perfectly well until you tell them something they don’t like and, all of a sudden, they don’t comprehend what you’re saying.
But a driver who only understands death threats? That’s a new one.
If I were a celebrity and an Uber driver wouldn’t stop, I might begin to think I was being kidnapped.
Uber Black is a service with professional or very highly rated drivers and luxury vehicles.
Even worse.
I agree that there is a proliferation of people who speak little or no English in customer service positions. I’ve found myself in airports in this country where I can’t understand announcements because of a thick accent by the speaker.
However, I’ve used Uber in France where the fact that I entered my destination in the app was an advantage because I didn’t have to communicate in a language I don’t know. I suspect that Mr. Sutherland must have changed his destination during the trip.
“when he played those evil characters in ‘Stand By Me,’ ‘A Time to Kill,’ ‘The Lost Boys,’ and ‘Eye for an Eye.’ “
Deserving of mention would be Lt. Jonathan Kendrick in A Few Good Men
Seems many of Sutherland’s characters don’t inspire sympathy; FWIW, I’ve never deemed Nicole Kidman the same after To Die For
PWS
I should have included that weasel. Keifer just looks like a bad guy.
Something is seriously wrong with this story; I smell a rat.
I’m going to apply a thin shred of logic and in the form of a question:
If, and I do mean if, the driver didn’t understand English well enough to understand a simple statement from a passenger, Kiefer Sutherland, that was ordering the driver to pull over, stop, let me out, how the hell can anyone believe that the driver understood that the words coming out of Sutherland’s mouth were threatening to kill him?
I call bull shit!
If this actually happened, I smell a money grubbing fraud rat at play here trying to set up Sutherland. If there isn’t an actual video or audio recording proving the claims of the incident, then police and Sutherland’s attorney should tell the driver to prove the accusations of assault and threatening to kill him or take a hike. If there IS a video or audio recording of this, then the driver needs to be asked why the orders of the passenger were not followed making this a rough equivalent to unlawful detention, aka kidnapping.
Now maybe there are details that haven’t been released, but as it stands, I call bull shit on the drivers claim.
I bet Sutherland never gets in a ride share vehicle again.
It’s difficult to render an ethics verdict on a badly incomplete article. Was the demanded stop in a safe location? Did Sutherland make the request via the app (the preferred means for route changes)? Did the driver have enough English to do his job, but not enough when the ante was raised to a police action? What language did the driver use to request an interpreter, or did the police request that? If the police, how did they know which languages?
I believe strongly that everyone should speak my preferred language at all times. Alas, life doesn’t always work the way I would like. In my area, still undergoing recovery and rebuilding from hurricanes more than a year ago, there are many workers who have little or no English (hopefully the ICE profiling sensors didn’t just go off). So, they and I use a translator app on our cell phones. Works well enough that I’ve made murdering them my second choice.