John Washington III Asks Whether School Bus Enforcement Is Protecting Children or Trapping Drivers for Revenue

John Washington III put a question to the country on Monday night, under a headline that left no doubt about the two answers he sees: 'School bus safety or government entrapment? The people deserve answers!' In a statement issued as a 2028 presidential candidate, John Washington III 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.

His argument starts from the purpose of the law itself. 'School bus laws were created to protect our children, NOT to create another revenue stream for city and state governments,' John Washington III wrote. He was equally direct about the other side of the line: 'I fully support protecting our children. Any driver who illegally passes a school bus and endangers children should be held accountable.' The distinction he drew is intent: 'there is a difference between protecting children and deliberately setting people up to receive traffic tickets.' And 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.'

John Washington III said the allegations would not be ignored under his administration. As president, he wrote, he will push for federal investigations, where legally authorized, into cities, states and law enforcement agencies accused of deliberately manufacturing traffic violations for financial gain, and will 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. 'THE GOVERNMENT WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE. THE PEOPLE DO NOT EXIST TO FUND THE GOVERNMENT THROUGH DECEPTIVE ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES!'

The questions he said the public deserves answered are specific: if an inactive school bus is being used primarily to generate citations rather than protect children, the public deserves to know who authorized it, why it was authorized, and whether those citations were lawful. The statement named no city, department or case - it is an allegation about a tactic, raised nationally, and in Florida it lands in every school zone in the state, Escambia and Santa Rosa included, where drivers pass stopped buses on two-lane roads every school morning. John Washington III's position, as he stated it, is that the stop arm exists for the child stepping off the bus - and for no one's budget.