Cops Now Hiding Behind Kids on School Buses to Bust People Texting While Driving

Indiana police officers have devised a somewhat devious plan to separate motorists from their money, all in the name of “keeping the public safe.” They are now hopping on school buses and using the elevated riding platform to look down into the cars of other motorists to see if they are texting while driving.

According to reports, after the officers on the buses encounter a violator, they radio their colleague in patrol cars and tell them to pull the vehicle over and to issue either a warning or a citation. The move to put police officers on school buses is not without criticism, and while what is taking place in Indiana may seem like an isolated police tactic, the measure is happening all throughout the country. According to Wave3 News:

“It is unsuspecting. The school buses have tinted windows and usually have kids on board. And the buses provide a great vantage point, allowing officers to see into cars from above.
An officer will have the task of spotting drivers using a phone with their hands while a vehicle is in motion, and looking for drivers who are not wearing their seatbelt.
“We’re going to be looking for anyone who is behind the wheel of a moving car, who is going to be looking at their phone or doing something with their phone with their hands,” Assistant Chief Craig Hayes said.”

“We’re going to be looking for anyone who is behind the wheel of a moving car, who is going to be looking at their phone or doing something with their phone with their hands,” Assistant Chief Craig Hayes told Wave 3 News.

Advertisment

READ MORE:  15 Year Old Kid Takes a Stand Against the Police State, Despite Being Punished for It

Police in Moscow, Idaho are doing the same thing, using unsuspecting school buses to catch distracted drivers who are texting and driving. Apparently, in both instances, ticketing for violations is not limited to just texting while driving. Unsafe movements such as passing a stopped school bus, not wearing a seatbelt, and following too closely will all be fair game in this new revenue generation scheme. However, since buses use more fuel, the practice will cost taxpayers more money.

The practice now appears to be taking place nationwide, not just in the Midwest. In Attleboro, Massachusetts, officers are randomly riding school buses with school children, with the stated goal to monitor motorists and better protect children. Translation: They’ve found a new way to separate citizens from their money.

But, we at TFTP, believe little good can come from putting armed law enforcement officials on school buses with students. We’ve documented countless examples of police officers abusing their badge and brutalizing innocent citizens, and it all serves as a reminder that this new revenue generation scheme is not “for the people.”

Police officers on school buses! What could possibly go wrong? Aside from the apparent distrust children and teenagers will have after observing police officers use the vantage point of the bus to stop random members of the public, there are a lot of reasons it is a bad idea.

What will happen when the police officer smells marijuana on a student, even though the student or the parent may have a legal medical marijuana card? Will they open an investigation using Child Protective Services to threaten to take the kids out of the home?

READ MORE:  Police Strip-Search 3 People in Public, Force Woman to Remove Tampon While Taunting Her

What happens when a fight breaks out on the bus with older teenagers? Some teenagers are old enough to be arrested and taken to jail, given a criminal record, all because the police officer was on the bus and observed the fight. Many school bus fights go unreported and therefore do not involve the law when students are working out their own problems.

No, putting police officers on school buses is just as bad of an idea as placing them inside our institutions of education in the first place. All too often we write about pedophile cops who have purposefully gotten close to kids and teenagers in an effort to victimize the vulnerable.

It is time educators stand up and demand police officers leave their schools. Men and women, who are also educators, are more than capable of keeping a school safe, dealing with rare instances of active shooters, and breaking up fights without hauling students off to jail and giving them a record. Just this week, a female teacher in Illinois stopped a school shooter in his tracks when she tackled him.

Ultimately, police should not be allowed to hide behind innocent children to catch violators of state laws. If they continue to do so, they should be subjected to the same rigorous background checks as full-time school personnel, before they are ever allowed to put a boot on the first step of a school bus. The cops on school buses schemes serve to illustrate how police will stop at nothing to generate revenue and criminalize all citizens with frivolous violations.

READ MORE:  Raging Cop Tackles Critical Mass Cyclist

New ‘Distracted Walking’ Legislation Will Outlaw Texting, and Even Talking, While Walking

The heinous “crime” of “distracted walking” has become the latest trend that cities in the United States are looking to legislate into nonexistence—relying on tax dollars and the extortion of citizens to solve the problem instead of common sense.

Stamford, Connecticut, is the most recent city to join the bandwagon, and its proposal would make texting, and even talking, on an electronic device while walking illegal.  

A report from CBS New York noted that “nationwide pedestrian fatalities jumped about 11 percent last year with nearly 6,000 people killed,” according to the National Governors’ Highway Safety Association.

John Zelinsky, a Stamford City representative who is fully in support of the proposal, claimed that its purpose “is not actually to raise money for the city, but to hopefully educate the public.” He said residents will face an initial fine of $30 if police deem that they fit the description of “distracted walkers.”

Advertisment

“They’re oblivious to cars,” Zelinsky said. “I don’t want any more injuries or deaths as a result of pedestrians getting hit. We’ve had about four or five within the past three or four years.”

According to CBS New York, most Stamford residents “seemed to like the idea,” of the new proposal. However, residents such as Troy Latham questioned why the city feels the need to legislate common sense.

“I think that’s ridiculous,” Latham said. “If it’s an important text message or call they’re getting, like what if it’s too late, what if their mother’s in the hospital and they need someone to call real quick.”

The proposal in Stamford is based on a ban that was passed in Honolulu, Hawaii, in July. The legislation was passed by a vote of 7-2 by Honolulu’s city council, and its fines range from $15 to $99, depending on how many offenses the individuals have accumulated. The ban goes into effect in October.

READ MORE:  Man Beaten & Arrested After Trying to Scare Burglars Away, Turns Out the Burglars were Cops

Mayor Kirk Caldwell told reporters that Honolulu holds “the unfortunate distinction of being a major city with more pedestrians being hit in crosswalks, particularly our seniors, than almost any other city in the county.”

Honolulu resident Ben Robinson told the city council in a written testimony that he sees this new law as a form of government overreach that infringes on personal freedom. “Scrap this intrusive bill, provide more education to citizens about responsible electronics usage, and allow law enforcement to focus on larger issues,” he said.

In addition to the argument over whether making “distracted walking” illegal is a waste of taxpayer dollars that will enforce a law that should be common sense, there is also the question of how police will handle it, and if there will be an increase in cases of police brutality stemming from incidents where officers stop individuals in an attempt to issue citations for walking and using an electronic device.

As The Free Thought Project has reported, there has been a recent increase in police using excessive force when apprehending individuals for the heinous crime of “jaywalking.”

In June 2016, police used a taser on a mentally ill man while beating him with batons in Bakersfield, California. In August 2016, police choked a high school student and tackled him on the ground in Fresno, California. In April, a viral video showed police repeatedly beating a man, strip him naked, and then mock him, in Del Paso Heights, California. In July, a viral video showed police repeatedly hitting a man as they held him to the ground in Millville, New Jersey. The one thing all of these cases have in common? The suspect police were using excessive force on had been stopped for allegedly jaywalking.

READ MORE:  Graphic Video: Cops Shoot Man in the Face in Front of Multiple Witnesses, All Hell Breaks Loose

WATCH: Cop Caught Driving While Watching a Football Game on His Laptop

Port Saint Lucie, FL — A rather disturbing video was submitted to the Free Thought Project showing a St. Lucie Police Officer driving his car whilst watching a football game. Florida law prohibits the use of electronic devices while driving

Florida law prohibits the use of electronic devices while driving. However, police and emergency personnel are exempted from this law if, and only if, they are using them for official business while carrying out their duties. A cop watching a football game while driving down the street is anything but ‘official’.

The video below was taken Wednesday night by a source who wishes to remain anonymous. Our source tells TFTP that they witnessed the officer watching a football game on his computer while driving down US1 near Port Street. When the two crossed paths, she pulled out her phone and began filming.

As our source notes:

Advertisment

The police vehicle was a car length or two ahead of me as we approached and through the back windows i could see the bright screen and movement which caught my attention as its unusal in a police car. I pulled up adjacent to his vehicle in the far left lane as he was in the far right lane. I could very clearly see a football game being watched, and thought to myself, that’s not right..I made the decision to record in hopes of finding out if something had changed in terms of distracted driving rules as my understanding is its illegal and warrants a ticket.

When the light turned green, our source — not wanting to break the law — put her phone away. However, she noted that the game watching continued.

I stopped recording as the light turns green and caught just the beginning of the police cars movement. I drove alongside this car for the next half mile and the video continued to play and the officer continued to watch.

As TFTP recently reported, police across the country are cracking down on distracted driving. The charge of “driving under the influence” used to only apply to drivers who were under the influence of drugs or alcohol—but it will now apply to drivers who text, eat, smoke, read or groom while driving in the state of Washington.

READ MORE:  DC Cop Arrested for Engaging in Child Sex Trafficking & Stealing His Victim"s Money at Gunpoint

The implementation of the Driving Under the Influence of Electronics Act was expedited from January 2019 to July 23 after Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed a partial-veto, and insisted that “public safety is better served by implementing this bill this year.”

“When you are driving with a cell phone, you are a more dangerous driver than if you are driving drunk with a .08 blood alcohol level,” Inslee said during a press conference. “There’s hardly anything we’ve done in the last several years at the state Capitol to save more lives than this distracted driving law.”

If a cellphone is that dangerous, how deadly is watching a football game?

As TFTP has reported in the past, unfortunately, police officers die in the line of duty every year. However, only a small percentage of those deaths are from people attacking them. The major cause of death of police officers in the United States is from traffic accidents.

A study of just a single police department in Denver found that over the course of three years, 700 cops were involved in crashes. Of those 700 crashes, the majority of the time it was the officer’s fault. However, almost none of them are ever cited.

This above the law mentality coupled with irresponsible practices has created a dangerous environment for both police officers and the innocent civilians who all too often find themselves on the receiving end of a police cruiser’s front bumper. Until officers are held accountable for their dangerous actions — like unit 146 of the Port St. Lucie PD — then we can only expect this problem to get worse.

READ MORE:  Cop Shoots Himself, Blames Meth Heads, Statewide "Blue Alert" Manhunt Ensues -- Based on Lies

Here's Why Your Auto Insurance Rates Have Soared Nearly 20% In The Past Several Years

If you"re among the millions of Americans that have noticed your auto insurance premiums skyrocketing in recent years then you may want to thank the people in your life who habitually text and drive.  Since 2009, the average, annual U.S. car-insurance premium has risen over 17%, to $926 in 2016, according to trade group Insurance Information Institute. 

And, just like Obamacare, that rising premium is simply the socialization of added risks created by people making bad life decisions...like driving their cars at 80 miles per hour on a crowded freeway while simultaneously looking down at their phones to text about the latest Kardashian rumor.

Of course, auto insurance rates are rising despite all of the high-tech, anti-collision bells and whistles that have been added to vehicles (at a very hefty price, we might add) over the past decade as seemingly no amount of gadgetry can offset the benefits of actually keeping your eyes on the road...no matter what Tesla would have you believe.

According to a note from the Wall Street Journal, 36% of drivers admitted to texting and driving in a State Farm survey in 2015, which we assume means that the real number is roughly double that.

It’s “an epidemic issue for this country,” said Michael LaRocco, chief executive of State Auto Financial Corp., at an insurance-industry conference last month.

State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the largest U.S. auto insurer by market share, said 36% of the people it surveyed in 2015 admitted to texting while driving, and 29% said they access the internet, compared with 31% and 13%, respectively, in 2009.

State Farm’s survey found that 52% of respondents in 2011 owned a smartphone, and 88% owned one in 2015.

“Distracted driving was always there, but it just intensified as more applications for the smartphones became available," said Bill Caldwell, executive vice president of property and casualty at Horace Mann, in a recent interview. The insurer expects to raise rates 8% this year, on top of average 6.5% increases in 2016.

Oddly enough, insurance payouts started to spike right about the same time the first iPhone hit the shelves in 2007.

Meanwhile, as if texting and driving weren"t bad enough, roughly 20% of people admitted to State Farm that they regularly snap selfies from the driver"s seat and about 10% record videos....because why not?

The alarms being sounded by the industry are based partly on internal investigations to determine causes of policyholders’ crashes. Many insurers collect police reports, witness statements and their own drivers’ accounts in costlier wrecks, executives said. In claims that involve litigation, they may obtain drivers’ phone records, they said.

State Farm began surveying the public in 2009 to assess behind-the-wheel phone use. Drivers that participated in the survey acknowledge the distractions of their smartphones, according to State Farm, but many continue to use them. In the latest survey, about one-fifth of drivers admitted taking photos with their phones and a 10th recorded video. Both these activities were added to the 2015 survey.

”Those are big numbers, and they are going in the wrong direction,” said Chris Mullen, who heads State Farm’s technology research.

Of course, life is just a little better when we spread the wealth around to pay for the bad decisions of others...just ask Obama.