On August 7, 2012 Lieutenant Colonel Joseph L. Rigby a Public Safety officer in charge of Driver Services for the Mississippi Highway Patrol, and Rene Morris, a clerk at the Department of Public Safety, pled guilty in U.S. District Court for their involvement in a CDL testing scheme that put unsafe and less trained truck drivers on the roads.
Previously in January 2011, the two suspects were charged with a superseding indictment in U.S. District Court, Jackson, Mississippi, for conspiracy and false statements relating to CDL testing scores and certifications.
The recently-concluded DOT investigation was begun because of a request for assistance from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI) regarding allegations from professional truck drivers that State troopers had aided and abetted others in creating false commercial driver’s license (CDL) test scores to obtain CDLs, and operational enhancements, such as HAZMAT and passenger endorsements, without going through the mandated state and Federal testing requirements.
The troopers were also alleged to have aided and abetted others in altering CDL driver records to reduce speeding infractions to lesser charges and altered the guilty judicial dispositions of driver records to aid and abet others from receiving judgments in accordance with the State of Mississippi’s due process of law.
All parties to this certification scam have been removed from rank and a higher level of surveillance on state public safety offices has been activated.
Read more about state highway safety investigations at the official Department of Transportation Website.