School bus camera tickets spark new lawsuit on Long Island

Seven Suffolk County residents have sued the county over its school bus camera program, arguing there was insufficient evidence to cite them for allegedly passing a stopped school bus.

The lawsuit, filed last month in Suffolk Supreme Court, leans on a state court decision from last year that for months held up prosecutions of school bus camera tickets in Suffolk and eventually led to more than 8,000 tickets being dismissed.

That decision, 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.

The recent lawsuit against the county is the latest legal challenge to Long Island’s school bus camera programs, including a similar lawsuit against the Town of Hempstead and a federal suit against BusPatrol America, the company that operates the programs.

"We’re alleging that they issued these notices of violation without evidence that a violation had occurred," said Martin Bienstock, a Washington, D.C., attorney representing the plaintiffs in Suffolk. "This huge population of people getting tickets wouldn’t be if Suffolk was following the law."

Suffolk County officials declined to comment, with county spokesman Mike Martino saying, "The county does not comment on litigation matters." BusPatrol also declined to comment.

Among the plaintiffs is Elizabeth Wasilewicz, of Centereach, who was ticketed three times under Suffolk’s bus camera program. She successfully challenged one of those tickets, which the complaint says was issued from a location that was not a bus stop. Wasilewicz complained about the ticket over email and the violation was dismissed, according to the complaint. She did pay the two other citations. 

The other six plaintiffs are Suffolk residents who paid their citations. The lawsuit seeks class-action status, which, if granted, would mean others in similar situations would be eligible to join the lawsuit.

They claim numerous problems with the evidence provided against them by the county and BusPatrol, and say the violations issued weren’t valid.

Much of that argument stems from a case involving Sayville resident Alfred Croce III, who got a bus camera ticket in October 2021. After losing his challenge locally, Croce took the unusual step of appealing that decision to the Appellate Term of the state Supreme Court.

Croce argued that the evidence presented against him by BusPatrol failed to prove the bus he allegedly passed was picking up or dropping off students, or that it had proper markings identifying it as a school bus, both required by state law.

The three-judge appellate panel agreed with Croce and in November threw out his ticket — in turn, inviting major questions about school bus camera programs more generally. 

After that decision, Suffolk delayed prosecution on its bus camera tickets until the State Legislature this past spring added to the law the presumption that a stopped school bus with its lights flashing is picking up or discharging children. That change also created a way for local governments to show in evidence that a stopped bus has the proper markings.

Between the time the appellate judges ruled for Croce last November and state lawmakers tweaked the law this past spring, bus camera tickets continued to pile up in Suffolk. The county ultimately dismissed more than 8,000 contested tickets, Newsday reported in June.

Paul Sabatino, former counsel to the Suffolk legislature, said that people who paid their fines before the change in state law likely have a claim, considering the Croce decision.

"Those people who would be part of the class action, their fine predates whatever the effective date of the law is," he said. "They’d still have a viable claim under the class action."

According to the Suffolk complaint, Wasilewicz paid her second citation on Dec. 18, unaware the appellate panel had called the tickets into question less than three weeks before.

"In Suffolk, the county recognized it didn’t have the evidence to bring these cases in court," Bienstock said, referring to the period after the Croce decision when Suffolk stopped prosecuting the bus camera tickets. "The county should not have been issuing tickets to people when it knew it didn’t have the evidence it needed to prosecute people."

Bienstock said the primary goal of the lawsuit is to refund the people who paid bus camera tickets.

Bienstock and his co-counsel, Joseph Aron, also have filed two similar lawsuits against school bus camera programs on Long Island, one in federal court against BusPatrol and one in Nassau Supreme Court against the Town of Hempstead. Both lawsuits seek class-action status.

A federal judge earlier this month 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. Bienstock said he plans to appeal the dismissal.

The lawsuit against the Town of Hempstead, which also argues there was insufficient evidence to issue violations, is ongoing.

Suffolk’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%.

Suffolk has until Sept. 10 to respond to the lawsuit.