This update is republished with permission from the Miami Herald, with whom The Tributary co-reported the original investigation.
Miami-Dade County Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz announced she is offering some reprieve to drivers who have been hit with school bus arm tickets.
Friday afternoon, Cordero-Stutz posted on X that all median violations have been suspended, for now.
“Urgent Update on Bus Camera. I have immediately suspended enforcement of all citations that relate to median violations. Stay tuned for further updates,” she wrote on X.
Last week, the Miami Herald in collaboration with The Tributary published an investigation revealing many Miami-Dade drivers were issued tickets from the school district’s bus safety program in error. Many drivers who were driving on the opposite side of a raised median from a stopped school bus were receiving notices of violation in the mail. That’s legal, but they got the $225 ticket anyway.
The investigation also found that when those same drivers tried to contest their notice of violation, they would be stuck in limbo waiting for a court date that never came. Often drivers would just pay the fine.
The school bus safety program is a collaboration between the school district, the Miami-Dade sheriff’s office and BusPatrol, a private vendor that administers the program. Superintendent Jose Dotres issued a memo last Friday instructing Ivan Silva, the chief of Miami-Dade Schools Police to work with the county sheriff’s office to fix the citation review process.
The Miami Herald reached out to the sheriff’s office and the school district for clarification if the suspension applied to violations going forward or if it would be applied retroactively to drivers who had already received a notice of violation. No one responded by the time of publishing.
Steve Randazzo, the chief growth officer of BusPatrol responded to the Miami Herald’s question by text directing us to the sheriff’s office. “You’re going to have to ask [the sheriff’s office]. As always, we support the enforcement decisions around citation issuance made by the law enforcement agency since they have the sole discretion in this area.”
Also this week, a class action was filed against BusPatrol on behalf of Miami-Dade drivers who say they were not given due process when fighting their tickets. As of Dec. 19, 120,000 drivers had received violation notices in Miami-Dade County for illegally passing extended school bus “stop arms.” The courts have received over 1,000 notices from people who tried to contest their citation, but so far no drivers have been given a chance to make their case in front of a judge.
