Seven Suffolk County residents are suing the county over its school bus camera program, which has led to thousands of tickets being issued to drivers who allegedly passed stopped school buses.
This is the latest legal challenge to Long Island’s school bus camera programs, following a similar lawsuit against the Town of Hempstead and a federal suit against BusPatrol America, the company in charge of operating the program.
All of these lawsuits lean on a state court decision from last year that held up prosecutions of school bus cameras in Suffolk and eventually led to more than 8,000 tickets being dismissed. The decision, officiated by an appellate judicial panel, caused the State Legislature to amend the law that permitted local governments across the state to use bus-mounted cameras to catch and ticket drivers who pass stopped school buses.
Earlier this month however, a judge dismissed the suit against BusPatrol, which makes many of the same allegations as the complaint against Suffolk County, saying the complaint failed to establish a factual basis for the claims. Martin Bienstock, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing the plaintiffs in Suffolk, said he plans to appeal the dismissal.
Among the plaintiffs of the newest suit is Elizabeth Wasilewicz, of Centereach, who was ticketed three times under Suffolk’s bus camera program, Newsday reported. She successfully challenged one of those tickets, which the complaint says was issued from a location that was not a bus stop.
The other six plaintiffs are Suffolk residents who paid their citations, but argue there are numerous problems with the evidence provided against them by the county and BusPatrol, and say the violations issued are invalid. The lawsuit seeks class-action status, which, if granted, would indicate others in similar situations would be able to join the litigation.
“We’re alleging that they issued these notices of violation without evidence that a violation had occurred,” said Bienstock. “This huge population of people getting tickets wouldn’t be if Suffolk was following the law.”
Suffolk County officials have until Sept. 10 to respond to the lawsuit. BusPatrol has also not yet responded.
The county’s school bus camera program generated around $45 million in revenue from tickets in 2022 and 2023, according to the county’s annual reports on the programs from those years. The contract allows the county to keep 55% of that revenue, while BusPatrol gets the remaining 45%.
