REF: ITA
See article in Florida Today: 23 Aug 2007
Driving academy strands truckers
[FONT=Times New Roman, Serif]School's licenses invalid; owner may face charges[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]BY KEYONNA SUMMERS [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]MELBOURNE - More than 730 operators of tractor-trailers and other large trucks have invalid commercial driver's licenses because police said a Melbourne-based driving school used improper testing procedures.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The State Attorney's Office is pondering criminal charges, including a racketeering charge, against Joseph Neal Smith, the 51-year-old Merritt Island owner of Interstate Trucking Academy.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]In the meantime, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles stripped Smith of his testing license.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]State driving officials said the situation has put the truck drivers, and motorists in general, in a difficult and potentially risky situation: 733 people from Brevard County and elsewhere who took driving classes and tests since ITA opened in November 2004 will have to be retested by Oct. 4 or risk having their licenses revoked. Those who fail the test will be downgraded to a non-[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]commercial driver's license.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Highway Safety spokeswoman Ann Nucatola said her agency's main focus is to ensure there are safe drivers on the roads.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"We have to know that they know what they're doing when they're on the road," she said. "And our inspectors decided that ITA was not doing things the way they needed to be done. . . . This is a safety issue, and we take it seriously."[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Commercial driver's licenses are required for drivers of 18-wheelers, trucks that carry hazardous materials, vehicles that carry more than 15 passengers or trucks that weight more than 26,000 pounds. Once testing is conducted at schools such as ITA, the results are entered into a state database, waivers are issued and a license is presented by local licensing agencies.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Smith, released from the Brevard County jail on $25,000 bond, is scheduled to go before Circuit Judge Lisa Davidson on Oct. 12.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Phone numbers for Smith and Interstate Trucking Academy were disconnected.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Smith's attorney, Richard Canina, declined comment because the charges are still pending.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]According to an informant cited in a Florida Highway Patrol arrest warrant application, Smith -- among other things -- granted licenses based on his subjective opinions of whether students were capable of performing certain skills rather than on their actual experience. Some students never gained enough hours to legitimately pass some tests because Smith never held classes on Saturdays, as required, the informant said.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The informant also alleged that Smith kept a "loser file" -- a stack of records, accumulated at random, of students he disqualified based on bogus accusations to keep up a 20 percent failure rate so the state wouldn't become suspicious and investigate.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]It didn't work.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]FHP carried out a sting operation and arrested Smith on[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]June 27.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The agency has recommended a litany of charges for Smith, including falsifying records, communications fraud and forgery. FHP also accused Smith of violating the RICO Act, a federal racketeering charge typically reserved for well-established organized criminal organizations involving gangsters and drug lords.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]State driving officials say such cases aren't uncommon.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Since 2000, the highway safety department said it has revoked licenses in six similar cases, Nucatola said.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Two of those -- the 2000 REACT case in Tampa and the 2001 3S Trucking case in Fort Lauderdale -- led to federal charges, she said. The other four resulted in state charges only.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Steve Cole, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Orlando, said he has not heard whether his office plans to take over the case from the county and pursue federal racketeering charges.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Brevard State Attorney's Office officials said an intake officer is reviewing the case and has 175 days from the arrest date to file charges.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Covert evaluation[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]A June 25 arrest affidavit shows the alleged violations were discovered early this year during a routine, albeit covert, evaluation of the trucking company by a state driver's licensing official.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The official noticed that the ITA test results submitted for license applicants on the days he had conducted his evaluation at the trucking school did not reflect the activities he had observed. He requested an investigation.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Officials at the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles' Division of Driver Licenses set up an interview with the informant, a former ITA employee named Edward Rodriguez.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]According to Rodriguez, Smith employed several questionable methods, including using an unapproved testing route and paying students to work at his home or furniture business while giving them credit for classes they never attended.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Rodriguez also told investigators Smith automatically passed students from certain programs, and said he overheard Smith and his wife telling another employee they spent money designated for the business on personal items.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Smith's wife, Kathleen Smith, has not been charged.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Rodriguez, a trainer who had worked at ITA for about a year and a half, said he was fired when he refused to sign an employee contract before his attorney viewed it. He had recently started questioning the company's testing procedures.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]FHP, which used the findings of state investigators to initiate its own surveillance and investigation starting in May, refused to comment on the charges, citing a policy against speaking about pending criminal matters.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Retesting, at a cost[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]On July 6, nine days after Smith's arrest, state driving officials mailed letters notifying every patron at ITA since it became a testing site in 2004 that they would have to retest, and for many that means spending hundreds of dollars.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]While the test is free at the state's six testing sites, including one in Melbourne, test-takers must provide their own trucks, Nucatola said. Independent test sites provide a truck and test, but for a fee.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Lisa Gary, manager of the family-owned Adger Smith Wells Inc., a well drilling company, said her company spent $3,000 to enroll three employees in Smith's class from late February to early March following a traffic stop involving a company truck the operator was not licensed to drive.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The company has recently acquired a 32,000-pound truck with airbrakes, which requires a commercial license, when it was pulled over by Palm Bay police.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]In the wake of the ITA situation, the company had ruled out retesting at a state site since the truck with airbrakes does not have a passenger-side door, as required, because drilling equipment covers one side of the truck.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]The closest third-party tester is in Vero Beach, and Gary said it was difficult to reach the Indian River County School Board, which coordinates the classes that precede the testing. The next closest testing site is in Orlando.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"Not only are we going to have to go through the expense of our men taking another day off to do this, but it looks like we're going to have to rent a rig," a frustrated Gary said.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Employee Jim Mutchler, a driller's assistant, said it's frustrating that the tests may not have been done correctly the first time and that they have to retest even if they were.[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]"We're kind of taken aback because we thought we were all good to go," he said. "It took us a long time to go through this, and now we find out it's all for nothing."[/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Said driller James O'Neil: "I can't imagine the (hundreds) of people that have gone through this place, and now they're in the same boat as we are."[/FONT]