'We Were A Leader In This': Peabody To Enact School Bus Camera Stop Citation System

PEABODY, MA — Less than three years after Peabody mother Maria Scheri said she watched in "horror" as a car blew past a school bus stopped for her son and other school children — spurring a Stop The Operator from Passing (S.T.O.P.) advocacy campaign that led to the passage of long-stalled state legislation allowing for video evidence to be used in issuing citations for the violation — Peabody is poised to be among the first cities in the state to adopt the local option to utilize the new bus-arm camera enforcement option.

On Thursday, the Peabody City Council unanimously approved a resolution allowing for the creation of a school bus camera violation detection enforcement system that Peabody Police Capt. Scott Richards said will pave the way for a "zero tolerance" policy toward vehicles illegally not stopping for school buses boarding or discharging students.

• Peabody, Salem Bus Camera Safety Campaign Moves Law To Governor's Desk

"I'm sure many of you have kids, grandkids, neighborhood kids, you know kids, and when any of those kids are getting on and off the school bus and those cars go right past, your heart just drops," Scheri told the Legal Affairs Committee on Thursday. "So we did a lot of work. We got a lot of support. We were a leader in this."

Peabody Mayor Ted Bettencourt said the next step is to contract with a bus-arm camera monitoring company to implement the system that can then make the footage available to police. He said the program would be funded through the citations with additional revenue generated going toward school safety initiatives such as crossing guards and improving crosswalks near schools.

• Peabody School Bus Stop Safety Data Shows Rampant Driver Violations

"Certainly, there will be some tickets generated, some money generated," Bettencourt said. "But the real hope and intent of this law, and our actions, was really just to cure and curb some reckless driving, and some really dangerous behavior. That's been the emphasis behind this all along.

"It's something I am very proud of, as a city, that we were the lead community on this. This would not have happened without the city of Peabody, our efforts with Healey Bus, the school administration, School Committee and Maria Scheri, in particular."

• Demand For MA School Bus Safety Action After 3 Peabody Students Struck

Prior to the law's enactment, police officers had to witness a violation for a citation to be issued.

"We have issued citations for this — not near enough," Richards said. "That's why we were advocating for this legislation because this now gives us another tool to be able to cite people for the violation and not have to have a police officer behind the bus in order to do that.

"It's going to be a zero-tolerance policy as far as I'm concerned," he added. "The tickets will be mailed out. Warnings don't work all the time. So the citations, which are a pretty hefty fine, once they start getting sent out, they are going to send a message to the public that this is not going to be tolerated here."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)