Intro music
I work for the Import Safety CTAC.
were working on a project to locate Land Rover Defenders;
a particular model of an old style Land Rover.
These are older Land Rovers that are not in compliance
with current Department of Transportation standards.
It's a hip, fun-to-drive vehicle.
People see them and their eyes light up.
I'm doing the targeting.
I'm watching for those shipments, so that we can send out cargo hold requests to the ports
and give them a heads-up that this is part of our operation, and could they please take a look?
I've set up some queries in our automated targeting system, ATS, to help me narrow that field down,
so I'm not looking at the legitimate Land Rovers and I am looking at the Defenders.
Customs and Border Protection goes out and examines these vehicles
and sometimes you got a, y'know, pretty close to new vehicle with this ratty old VIN number on it.
The Officer might be looking at the vehicle thinking,
"Geez, that doesn't look like its 25 years old to me."
Officers in the field will get out their digital camera
and go out and look at the vehicle
and start clicking and taking these shots,
and then they put it all together into a Powerpoint
and send it over to NHTSA [National Highway Transportation Safety Administration]
We're asking the field to do this examination work
on a vehicle that we think is violative or has a good chance to be violative.
That's the kind of targeting we try to do here at CTAC.
I want to have a level of confidence that the vehicles coming at me on the highway
are going to be safe too; and for the most part, I feel that in this country.
It's something we take for granted.
And it's because NHTSA is out there putting down these regulations and people are abiding by those.
Here we have vehicles that are not playing by those rules,
and they're just so cool that people want them anyway.
And I don't think that's right.
Closing music