The company that operates the Jamestown Public Schools District’s school bus camera system is recommending minor changes to the way municipalities prosecute violations in the wake of an appeals court decision in November.

Jamestown began using BusPatrol in November following approval by the City Council and Jamestown Public Schools District earlier in the year. The city isn’t paying for the program. BusPatrol paid to install the cameras on Jamestown buses and will take them off if the district ends the agreement. Since the system went live in Jamestown, 85 tickets have been sent out by the city of Jamestown.

There will be few changes to Jamestown’s program in the wake of the court’s decision. Prosecutors statewide have been asked to include in their evidence when they try a stop-arm camera violation case additional evidence that BusPatrol already had available to prosecutors but that typically hadn’t been used in the past. No additional equipment will be necessary.

Tickets aren’t issued by BusPatrol. BusPatrol uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to sort through all of its camera footage to determine if enough evidence exists to send a violation notice. The AI information is reviewed by a person and then confirmed by a second BusPatrol employee before being reviewed by another team before the package of evidence is sent to the local municipality, which then makes the choice to send the ticket.

THE COURT CASE

Judges in the state Appellate Division’s Second Department ruled in three cases, the first coming in November, that the tickets driver’s received were insufficient to prove the drivers’ guilt of passing a stopped school bus while students were getting on or off the bus.

At issue is the prosecution of a stop-arm violation ticket in October 2021 in Patchogue, with the driver taking his ticket to a nonjury trial. The video depicting the violation was reviewed by the court, with attorneys for the Suffolk County Traffic Prosecutor’s Office providing evidence that a technician’s certificate certified the alleged violation. The technician said she inspected the recorded images presented in court and that they were true and accurate copies and represented the recorded images which she had reviewed. The court then found the driver liable for a $250 fine.

The driver appealed, saying the traffic prosecutor hasn’t proved the bus was a school bus marked and equipped as required under state law or that it had stopped for the purpose of picking up or discharging passengers, also a requirement in state law. All three members of the appellate court agreed with the driver that the ticket should be dismissed because the camera system didn’t provide enough evidence to prove the driver was guilty under the 2019 state law authorizing stop-arm cameras.

In particular, the court said no one said the bus was marked and equipped with proper flashing lights showing the bus is a school bus, that the video recording didn’t establish the bus was a school bus under state law and that there was no evidence of students getting on or off the bus.

“Even if the proof need only establish “substantial compliance” with the statutory requirements, the trial evidence fell far short of that standard,” the court wrote in its unanimous decision.

Two other cases – including one in late February – have been decided the same way by the Second Department Appellate Division justices using the first case as precedent. The cases are precedent only in the judicial districts that fall under the Second Department Appellate Division, not statewide courts.