‘Stealing from us': Miami drivers fed up with school district's bus camera program

Miami Herald

28-02-2025

Robert Strongarone was driving his Volvo SUV down Southwest 212th Street south of Miami, obeying all the traffic laws, when – in the blink of a camera lens – he got hit with a $225 automated traffic violation.
The same thing happened to Paul Morris Edelman, except on a different day, in a different car, on a different street. And to Jennifer Gonzalez.
All three were issued 'violation notices' and fined for illegally passing a camera-equipped Miami-Dade school bus - but none of them did anything illegal.
After a contract hastily signed by the school district kickstarted the program last year, a company called BusPatrol America installed cameras on all Miami-Dade school buses to catch motorists in the act of illegally passing a school bus with its 'stop-arm' extended. Since then, the School Bus Safety Program has papered the county with tens of thousands of $225 violation notices. Revenue numbers provided by the school district indicate the program is flagging more than 407 paid violations per day, seven days a week, generating a staggering $19.5 million in the first six months of the program.
A joint investigation by the Miami Herald and The Tributary, a Florida-based not-for-profit newsroom, found that many motorists who did nothing wrong are receiving violation notices. Sheriff's deputies are supposed to examine each video before fines are assessed, but a review of videos by Herald/Tributary journalists suggests there are plenty of bogus violations the deputies aren't weeding out.
'They are literally stealing from us,' said Ernesto Dominguez, who was shocked by the cost of an infraction. 'As a family with a 10-month-old baby and a single income, it was a hard blow for the holidays.'
Motorists who feel they wrongfully received a notice of violation have the right to contest the violation and receive a hearing. But getting a hearing has so far been impossible. As of January, the Miami-Dade court system had scheduled none, despite challenges dating back to early last summer.
Advocates of the program say it protects children entering and exiting school buses on busy streets from getting hit by passing vehicles. But critics, including Mark Gold, CEO and founder of The Ticket Clinic, the largest traffic ticket defense firm in the United States, call it a 'money grab.'
BusPatrol reaps the lion's share of the revenue – 70%, although that cut will be reduced to 60% after two years. The school district receives the rest and is supposed to spend it on bus safety.
In response to specific questions about the hearing process, BusPatrol sent reporters a general statement attesting to the company's 'commitment to keeping students safe,' accompanied by links to news articles about fatal school bus accidents.
South Florida motorists will soon see more of BusPatrol's violation notices. The company, which also operates in Hillsborough County, is finalizing a deal with Broward schools.
The Miami Herald/Tributary invited the Herald's audience to discuss its interactions with the Miami-Dade program. More than 250 responded, sharing videos and photos of their alleged infractions. Many expressed fury and frustration – over what are clearly wrongfully issued violation notices, over the lack of discretion when a violation is borderline, and over the hefty size of the fines, which is established by Florida statute.
Many motorists are being fined for driving in a safe and responsible manner. Although it is illegal to pass a school bus with its stop-arm extended – even if a driver is headed in the opposite direction several lanes over from the bus – there is a crucial exception: If the road has a raised median, motorists on the opposite side of that divide can legally pass.
That's what Strongarone, Edelman, and Gonzalez all did – and all got fined anyway.
Gonzalez, who received a violation notice in June, said she is sick of waiting for the hearing she requested last summer.
'I imagine many people just pay it without disputing, which is robbery,' she said, 'Also, I feel like they make it so difficult for you to get a resolution that people just pay it. And I don't think that that's fair.'
Paul Edelman's video not only has him driving on the legal side of a raised median, but shows a stream of other cars doing the same thing. Whether the other drivers were fined is not known – but at least 16 other motorists who responded to the Herald/Tributary survey complained of being wrongfully fined for the same thing.
Luis Sierra, public affairs detective with the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office, insisted deputies carefully review the videos and eliminate the violations that are not valid. He said deputies have weeded out 27,440 improper violations so far.
District 'should be ashamed'
The Bus Safety Program is the result of a three-way partnership between BusPatrol, the school district, and the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office.
BusPatrol monitors the cameras and sends the telltale videos to the sheriff's office for review before deputies give the company the OK to issue violation notices. Motorists are given a month to pay. If they fail to do so but do not challenge the violation, a uniform traffic citation, also known as a moving violation, is supposed to be issued. These citations can result in points on a driver's license. If the driver challenges the fine, it goes to the courts … in theory.
Since no single agency is in charge, getting answers about the program's problems is difficult.
The school district said unhappy motorists should take their complaints to the sheriff's office since it is charged with reviewing the videos. The contact for the sheriff's office is not printed on the violations.
A statement provided by Detective AC Colome from the sheriff's office blamed 'technical issues with the clerk of courts' filing portal' for the lack of hearings and uniform traffic citations to date, but said: 'Program partners are working diligently to mitigate circumstances that have delayed the processing of contestations [hearing requests] and uniform traffic citations.'
The clerk of courts' Chief of Staff Barby Rodriguez did not answer questions about challenges to traffic citations, and said that the courts' involvement in the School Bus Safety Program is 'strictly ministerial' and referred reporters to the sheriff's office and BusPatrol.
Eleven months into the program, challenges to the BusPatrol tickets are just now reaching the courts. At the end of January, only five challenges to alleged bus-safety violations were in the court system. Two days after the Herald/Tributary questioned the Sheriff's office about the delay in filing these challenges, the courts received nearly 1,000 of them.
As of Monday, Rodriguez said the courts have received 1,028 notices that motorists plan to contest their citations. Still, since no hearings for such challenges have been scheduled, it's unclear when relief might come for drivers who received bogus citations.
Callers to BusPatrol's Virginia headquarters encounter an automated phone tree explaining how to pay their bill, depending on state of residence. Persistent callers can eventually get through to a human voice.
After he was fined in September, Strongarone clipped and filled out the appeal form at the bottom of the notice. No hearing was scheduled, so he started calling.
'Every time I would call, I would get put on hold, and it would take hours. Nobody would answer the phone,' he said. Finally, someone at BusPatrol picked up the phone in January, he said, but that person knew nothing about the process of getting a Miami-Dade hearing.
The absence of hearings is not unique to Miami-Dade. ABC Action News reported earlier this month that there haven't been any scheduled in Hillsborough, either.
Motorists like Edelman, Gonzalez, and Strongarone constitute just one category of complaint. Other drivers told reporters they were several lanes wide of the school bus and no threat to school children when they rolled past the bus. That's still illegal. A common grievance was that the bus's stop-arm extended just as they were passing, making it dangerous for them to have lurched to a halt.
Still others said they were turning left at a busy intersection unaware that a bus had pulled to the side, hidden from view, on the cross street. Even had they seen the bus, slamming on the brakes in the middle of a turn in heavy traffic would have caused a chain reaction pileup, they said.
Some who responded to the survey told reporters they felt powerless and abused.
'Government officials should be ashamed,' said Don Casey, who is challenging his violation notice. 'I'm a 77-year-old person and a $225 dollar fine...is grocery money for a couple of weeks.'
A hasty no-bid contract
Like many drivers who were caught by the cameras, Samira Sami reluctantly paid the $225. But she isn't happy.
'Someone should investigate the linkages with this private company and commissioners or state representatives,' she wrote.
Last year, The Tributary did that, revealing how BusPatrol spent up to $1.4 million lobbying Florida's Legislature to adopt a bill permitting the installation of cameras on public school buses, then, after that, to allow camera companies to take a cut of the proceeds. BusPatrol also spent hundreds of thousands on campaign contributions at the state and local level, including to four current school board members.
Read more: Red lights, green cash: How a Florida lawmaker boosted BusPatrol and benefited her family
BusPatrol hired the son of one of the legislation's co-sponsors, Rep Vicki Lopez, R-Miami, as a vice president. Steve Randazzo, the company's chief growth officer, said those two things – the hiring and the legislation – had 'nothing to do' with each other.
In Miami-Dade, big contracts like BusPatrol's typically go through a rigorous procurement procedure where vendors compete for the school district's business. That's how the district ensures taxpayers get the best deal. It's what is happening in Broward County. Miami-Dade schools navigated around that practice, hiring BusPatrol with whirlwind speed.
A month and a half after the state legislation took effect, the school board voted on Aug. 16, 2023, to have staff 'explore the feasibility' of a bus camera program and if the idea proved feasible 'implement procurement procedures.' Twelve days later, staff had signed a 25-page contract with BusPatrol.
The district initially told reporters it had 'piggybacked' off a contract in another district. In response to a public records request for documentation, the district provided an unsigned contract between Hillsborough County schools and BusPatrol from August 2023 that never went into effect.
Days before publication, the district walked that back and said it didn't have to go through a bid process because it was a no-cost contract.
'We did not circumvent the process,' said Andrew Ruiz, a spokesman for the district. 'We followed the process.'
In any event, BusPatrol had 'the most comprehensive package,' said board member Danny Espino, who introduced the initial item to bring the program to Miami-Dade after meeting a BusPatrol lobbyist at a conference. Espino's political committee received $8,000 between July and September 2023 from the only political committee that BusPatrol contributed to, run by a lobbyist firm on the company's payroll.
Espino said he wasn't aware of the contribution to his committee amid donations from several other committees.
Numbers provided by the sheriff and the school district suggest many motorists are rebelling against the program either by contesting the fines, which puts collection on hold, or ignoring them. The sheriff's office reported that 120,000 violation notices had been issued as of Dec. 19., the last working day for the school district before winter break. If, as the district says, $19.5 million had been collected, that would suggest over 30% of fines are going unpaid.
Under the contract with Miami-Dade, unpaid violations can be sold to a collection agency with the district obliged to assist in collection. But that hasn't happened – yet.
Mark Gold, the Ticket Clinic founder, said he suspects the county doesn't want to be bothered with hearings and that unpaid violations might simply fade away, although he said most alleged violators probably pay because the violation notices look official and people just don't want to deal with the process of contesting.
As he did with red light cameras, Gold said he would relish the chance to challenge bus camera fines in court– if the county ever schedules a hearing. Already, BusPatrol has faced scrutiny, criticism and legal attacks in several jurisdictions around the country,
Until then, Capt. Ryan Howett, who oversees planning and special projects for the Miami-Dade sheriff, said drivers can alert his agency if they feel they were given a violation for doing nothing wrong. The email he provided: [e-mail].
Nandhini Srinivasan is an investigative reporting fellow with The Tributary, a Florida nonprofit investigative newsroom.