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Local 2 Investigates Uncovers Heating, Air Workers Avoiding Background Checks
Violent felons, ex-prisoners and other criminals are finding work as heating and air-conditioning contractors, thanks to a loophole uncovered by Local 2 Investigates.An ex-convict who had just finished serving a 35-year prison term was caught by Local 2 Investigates' hidden cameras, buying crack cocaine from what Houston police describe as a heavily armed gang. He was driving an air-conditioning repair truck, in between house calls for a Houston company.
HOUSTON -- Violent felons, ex-prisoners and other criminals are finding work as heating and air-conditioning contractors, thanks to a loophole uncovered by Local 2 Investigates.
An ex-convict who had just finished serving a 35-year prison term was caught by Local 2 Investigates' hidden cameras, buying crack cocaine from what Houston police describe as a heavily armed gang.
He was driving an air-conditioning repair truck, in between house calls for a Houston company. His boss fired him after police started rounding up the drug dealers and his company truck showed up on the evening news in a drug deal.
He is one of the tens of thousands of air-conditioning repair workers that are not required to be licensed by the state, according to the six-month investigation by Local 2.
The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation only licenses company owners or contractors who are certified in handling certain heavy industrial air systems.
"The contractors were the only persons being licensed, so the technicians that were working for the contractors were unlicensed individuals," said Bill Kuntz, executive director of the TDLR.
Kuntz admitted that meant no one was checking for criminal records on those workers, perhaps the most common heating and air-conditioning contractors that enter most homes for work in
Texas.
Sandy Chaisson, a northwest Houston homeowner who was shopping for a repair firm to winterize her furnace, reacted to the Local 2 Investigates report with shock.
"So, if I'm calling whatever company, I'm not getting a licensed person? I could have a murderer, a thief, walk into my home. I'm petrified," Chaisson said. "They could just rip me off. They could kill me. I live alone. That's scary."
But those unlicensed repair workers are not the only ones with criminal rap sheets who are working in homes throughout Texas, Local 2 Investigates revealed.
Some are getting licenses simply by telling the state their record is clean, when it really is not.
A review of thousands of licenses issued by Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation found:
- a Dallas repairman who served time for embezzling money and larceny
- a contractor in Llano who has been to jail several times for numerous theft convictions
- in Austin, a repairman convicted of drugs and theft by check
- assault and destruction of property convictions for a contractor in San Angelo
- a repairman in Amarillo who is a convicted burglar
On license application forms obtained by Local 2 Investigates, that Amarillo repairman and others simply checked "no" on a form when the state asked whether he had any criminal convictions.
"For a time, we had to do spot checks of that because of a lack of appropriations to do 100 percent checks," Kuntz said.
That meant taking the license applicant's word for it in many cases.
The state missed others the same way.
Local 2 Investigates followed one contractor to an apartment complex in Baytown. He had pleaded guilty in 1995 to illegally carrying a gun and a felony drug charge. He was still on probation when he left the TDLR application form blank, failing to disclose his criminal past. When the state sent it back to him, he checked "no," indicating he had never been in trouble.
Nearby resident Michole Avila said she was afraid for her family.
"They come inside and you don't know. You don't know who's walking in your door, and I have two kids, and that worries me. I guess that leaves us shoved in a corner, left to whatever they do to our apartments when we're not there," she said.
Beginning in April 2008, state lawmakers are requiring TDLR to check every applicant's criminal record. When burglary and other violent offenses turn up, licenses can be denied.
The new law also requires licenses for all the other workers who were not required to be licensed in the past.
Kuntz said, "It's definitely going to make it safer. The people that are going into the homes will have been screened for criminal background, where in the past, persons going into the homes had no screening at all."
Kuntz said that will keep problem contractors from getting into trouble and then bouncing around to other repair jobs when they are discovered.
"We can revoke the registration of that person," Kuntz said. "That person can't then go down the street and hire on with another contractor without that contractor knowing
that there was a problem."
If you have a news tip or question for KPRC Local 2 Investigates, drop them an e-mail or call their tipline at (713) 223-TIPS (8477).
http://www.click2houston.com/investigates/14542911/detail.html |
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