John Washington III Questions School Bus Enforcement: 'School Bus Safety or Government Entrapment?'

John Washington III is raising questions about how school bus stop-arm laws are being enforced, arguing in a statement Monday that the laws were created to protect children and should never become a revenue stream for city and state governments.

He said he is raising serious concerns about reports and allegations involving old, inactive school buses allegedly being used to catch drivers passing when their stop signs are activated — buses, he wrote, that are allegedly no longer being used to transport children, yet are being operated in ways that result in traffic citations. If city governments and police departments are deliberately approving such tactics simply to collect money, he wrote, that is a serious abuse of government authority.

Washington was explicit about the other side of the issue. He wrote that he fully supports protecting children, and that any driver who illegally passes a school bus and endangers children should be held accountable. The difference, he argued, is between protecting children and deliberately setting people up to receive traffic tickets.

"THE GOVERNMENT WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE. THE PEOPLE DO NOT EXIST TO FUND THE GOVERNMENT THROUGH DECEPTIVE ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES!" he wrote.

He said that under his administration the allegations would not be ignored: as president, he wrote, he would push for federal investigations, where legally authorized, into cities, states and law enforcement agencies accused of deliberately manufacturing traffic violations for financial gain, and would pursue accountability through every lawful avenue available, including federal civil rights enforcement where violations of federal law are established.

No city government, police department or state official should be above accountability, he wrote. If an inactive school bus is being used primarily to generate citations rather than protect children, he said, the public deserves to know who authorized it, why it was authorized, and whether those citations were lawful.