GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — In the first five months of last year, Gwinnett County Public Schools collected more than $570,000 from drivers who illegally passed school buses preparing to drop off or pick up students.
"I've seen ones in neighborhoods where kids are getting off right at their house, and people are passing the school bus," said Gwinnett Schools Resource Officer Lewis Rawls.
Rawls gave Channel 2's Tom Regan a behind-the-scenes look at how officers review video taken from cameras mounted on the side of 300 school buses.
The video is collected by a private contractor and then shared with school police who decide whether the driver illegally passed the bus while its stop sign gate was out.
Fines start at $100 and go up to $1,000 for repeat violators.
"The majority are new violators, but we occasionally get frequent violators," Rawls said.
Each day, a half dozen officers spend hours reviewing 200 to 300 videos. One recent video showed two drivers passing a stopped school bus, even though the stop sign was deployed and the driver was signaling through his window for the motorists to stop.
Not all suspected violators get fined. About a third are determined questionable and no citation is issued.
"If the stop sign comes out, as the car is passing by, or something like that, that's a gray area, and that’s one for which I would not send through as a violation," Rawls said.
During the past school semester, more than 8,000 violations were sent out.
Drivers have a month to pay the fine or can contest it in court. However few do. Attached to the violation is a video clip of the incident.
"The safety of our students getting to and front school is most important to us. So we are hoping this does decrease the number of violations that are sent to us, to view," Rawls said.