Dozens of Texas State Troopers and Department of Public Safety regulatory investigators hit the streets of Dallas and surrounding cities on Wednesday and Thursday trying to locate some of the more than 700 vehicle inspectors the department now suspects are involved in faking vehicle safety and emissions inspections.
Inspectors tied to state-licensed inspection shops are suspected of taking cash in exchange for falsely passing cars.
DPS officials said at least five arrests had been made so far, and more than two dozen inspection stations had been locked out of the state system.
Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview at DPS headquarters in Austin, DPS Director Steven McCraw told NBC 5 Investigates he is frustrated that the state's lack of technology to prevent the fraud has created extra work for law enforcement.
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“It forces us to divert resources from high priority matters to lower priority matters just for a period of time so we can have an impact,” McCraw told NBC 5 Senior Investigative Reporter Scott Friedman.
As a series of reports from NBC 5 Investigates has shown, the state’s vehicle inspection computer system – overseen by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, is not programmed to prevent an inspector from issuing a false passing report even though the system captures data - red flags - suggesting many inspections are fake.
In the weeks since we started asking questions, the TCEQ has activated a feature in the computer that at least locks out some inspectors after they are suspected of running multiple fake inspections.
NBC 5 Investigates has learned from TCEQ officials that the feature was created more than 10 years ago, but was never activated.
In a statement, TCEQ said DPS did not ask them to turn it on until last month.
DPS told NBC 5 it was not aware the feature existed.
McCraw acknowledged Thursday that some of the current problems could have been headed off if those lockouts had been put in place a decade ago.
“Absolutely, there's no question about it,” McCraw said.
Since the lockouts were put in place, DPS said more than 100 inspectors had been prevented from accessing the system.
McCraw said, going forward, his agency is working with TCEQ to assure that more technology changes will be made to stem the tide of fake inspections.
“It could have been done. It should have been done. It’s going to be done,” McCraw said.
But in order to prevent vehicle inspectors from falsely passing cars in real-time - instead of after the fact - TCEQ said it would also have to modify the emissions analyzer software.
In a statement, the agency told NBC 5, "Until this change is made these (falsely inspected) vehicles will still receive their inspection report at the end of the inspection."
That allows the car to get Texas plates even though it never really passed.
McCraw is calling on the TCEQ to make that software change now to help cut the number of stations and inspectors his agency needs to investigate.
“And, the sooner they can do that, the better,” McCraw said.
“I'm confident they want the same thing as we do. And I can assure you that the both of us will be working towards that end,” McCraw told NBC 5.
But in a statement Thursday, TCEQ said it had not decided yet whether it will make the change McCraw is requesting.
“The TCEQ is having discussions with DPS about possible ways to enhance the enforcement tools for the I/M (inspection & maintenance) program. However, no decision has been made and the TCEQ is not modifying the analyzer software at this time,” the statement said.
For now, DPS troopers often have to manually search inspection data to identify locations suspected of falsely passing cars, and then visit them to conduct surveillance to see if the business is passing cars that are not really at the shop. Experts say stations conducting fraudulent inspections can now use emissions system simulators or surrogate cars to falsify an inspection, and the vehicle that passes doesn’t even have to visit the shop.
NBC 5 Investigates rode along with some of the state troopers deployed on the inspection enforcement operation in Dallas this week.
At several locations, troopers found the inspection business they were looking for was not at its registered address, and neither was the emissions analyzer device the department suspects is being used to conduct fake inspections.
McCraw said this highlights the challenges of investigations after the fact, versus cutting off the bad actors at the start of the process.
“That’s why I talked about prevention on the front end”, McCraw said. “Because If the business is not there, or the business is there, but the inspector is not there and he's off-site, there's no way to triangulate exactly where they're at. So it's very difficult from an enforcement standpoint.”
