John Washington III Questions Whether Inactive School Buses Are Being Used to Generate Traffic Citations

John Washington III is raising what he calls serious concerns about reports and allegations involving old, inactive school buses being used to catch drivers who pass when their stop signs are activated. In a public statement headed "School Bus Safety or Government Entrapment?", he argued that school bus laws were created to protect children, not to create another revenue stream for city and state governments.

He was explicit that his objection is not to enforcement itself. He said he fully supports protecting children, and that any driver who illegally passes a school bus and endangers children should be held accountable. "But there is a difference between protecting children and deliberately setting people up to receive traffic tickets," he wrote. If city governments and police departments are deliberately approving such tactics simply to collect more money from hardworking Americans, he wrote, that is "a serious abuse of government authority."

John Washington III said that under his administration the allegations would not be ignored. As president, he said, 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.

He closed by framing the question as one of authorization and lawfulness: 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 — and he said stronger safeguards are needed. "The government works for the people," he wrote. "The people do not exist to fund the government through deceptive enforcement practices."