FLORIDA — Florida’s new school bus cameras, which capture drivers who pass a bus while its stop arm is out, is now the focus of a new class action lawsuit.
The lawsuit alleges Polk County’s bus cameras are a money-making “scheme” that uses the cover of student safety to generate “large-scale revenue,” according to the federal lawsuit filed in Florida’s Middle District. The lawsuit is considered a putative class action until a judge certifies it as a formal class action lawsuit.
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“They hide behind school safety, but that's not their real intent. Their real intent is to become a cash cow,” said Miami-based attorney Gino Moreno, who filed the lawsuit along with his law partner, Arlenys Perdomo.
The lawsuit comes months after Investigative Reporter Katie LaGrone and investigative photographer Matthew Apthorp started investigating the for-profit camera program, which was approved by lawmakers in 2023.
By the fall of 2024, several school districts had equipped its buses with cameras and drivers started getting issued $225 if they were caught passing a school bus illegally. But the hastily rolled out program was setting up without a hearing process in place for drivers who wanted to challenge their fine.
To date, the cameras have generated a total more than $40 million in just the handful of counties participating. Polk County is one of four counties that started issuing tickets to drivers in the fall of 2024. To date, about 13,000 citations have been issued to drivers in Polk County.
Earlier this year, we spoke with some Polk County drivers who believed they were unfairly ticketed.
“Why am I getting a ticket at a railroad crossing,” asked Cleo Davis back in the spring.
After digging into Polk’s County’s school bus camera program, we discovered drivers had no way to challenge their fine until it became a pricier uniform traffic citation, which can be subject to higher fines and stiffer penalties, including license suspension.
In Miami-Dade and Hillsborough Counties, we found that drivers started getting issued violations without any hearing process for them to contest their fines if they wanted to.
The lack of due process left Davis and other drivers suspicious that the cameras, while well-intentioned, had become an easy “money grab,” since most drivers pay the violation without contesting them.
Polk County’s outspoken Sheriff, Grady Judd, also acknowledged the injustice in the program’s lack of due process.
“I don’t think you should have to pay an extra $100 to appeal your citation, but I didn’t create the law,” he said during an interview in the spring.
Last session, lawmakers revised the law to give local school districts the authority to implement the hearing process for drivers to challenge their tickets.
Over the summer, Polk County’s sheriff directed its camera vendor, Verra Mobility, to stop issuing tickets until a proper due process program was in place.
“It tells you that they know they were wrong from the beginning,” said attorney Moreno.
In the lawsuit, Moreno and Perdomo accuse Verra Mobility, the Polk County Sheriff and the Polk County school district of launching a “flawed and unlawful camera “scheme” that is “masquerading as a public safety initiative.”
The lawsuit lays out how thousands of drivers were issued notices of violation without being clearly informed that they couldn’t contest the $225 fine until it lapsed and became a $329 uniform traffic citation.
The lawsuit stated that it took “triggering increased penalties and greater legal risk” for drivers to “exercise their right to be heard.”
According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff, a resident of Illinois, ended up paying $336 after he tried to fight his $225 violation and lost.
“That's just not fair, it’s not a fair process,” said Moreno. “It’s a kind of a system where it's a pay or be penalized system. It’s a very, very coercive,” he said. Moreno is seeking refunds to all the drivers who paid their violations without a proper due process in place.
The lawsuit is the second one of its kind in Florida. Earlier this year, attorneys Moreno and Perdomo filed a similar lawsuit in Miami-Dade against its camera vendor, BusPatrol. The lawsuit remains ongoing.
In the meantime, Polk’s school bus camera violations remain on pause until a proper due process system is rolling.
“It acknowledges that they were doing things incorrectly,” said Perdomo. “Had they been doing things correctly, then there's really no reason to suspend them,” she said.
In response to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said the cameras are a school district program. The school district would not comment on ongoing litigation and the vendor, Verra Mobility, referred us back to the school district.
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“We give people that opportunity to really learn those lessons from the holocaust, to hear from survivors, to be able to see physical evidence.”
Tampa Bay 28 reporter Casey Albritton visited the soon-to-be reopened Florida Holocaust Museum