MIAMI – The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office is hitting the brakes on a program aimed at citing reckless drivers.
Tickets were being issued based on actions caught on school bus cameras.
The laws about passing a school bus are not new, but the camera enforcement is.
Attorney Mark Gold of The Ticket Clinic has seen what he calls “big brother” or “money grab” type enforcement like this before. In fact, he successfully challenged red light cameras in the state Supreme Court.
“All those people all the way on the other side, going the other direction of the bus, every single one of them are getting a ticket from bus patrol,” said Gold.
Last week, Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero Stutz announced the immediate suspension of enforcement of all citations that relate to median violations after drivers reported getting $225 fines in the mail when they hadn’t even broken the law.
“I’m anticipating that what she meant was the tickets that were issued with a raised median, which people do not have to stop if there’s a raised median, separating them from the traffic from the school bus,” said Gold.
Gold says excess enforcement like that shows this effort wasn’t really about keeping bus riders safe.
“I think it’s really dangerous,” said Gold. “You’re supposed to be looking ahead when you’re driving, not six lanes over to the left to see if there’s a school bus there.”
But Gold says that’s an issue for the state legislature to sort out. Back in October, Bus Patrol, the company that provided the one thousand stop arm cameras, reported an average of 6,000 violation notices every week since launching here last spring.
Local 10 News reached out to Bus Patrol about the suspension of median related violations.
They responded with a statement that read, in part:
“As always, enforcement decisions around citation issuance are made by the law enforcement agency as they have the sole discretion in this area.”
Dozens of Local 10 News viewers reached out to reporter Saira Anwer on Monday regarding their notices. Most of them were not related to a street median and aren’t affected by this suspension, but many of the stories dealt with very ambiguous scenarios.
Some drivers who reached out said when they tried to challenge the violation and schedule a court date, they were just left in legal limbo with no clear answers.
Gold says personally, he advises his clients not to pay the fines. So far, none of the ones he’s come across have turned into actual traffic citations which would add points to a driver’s license.
“Over a year, we haven’t gotten a ticket yet,” said Gold. “None of them have turned into tickets.”