John Washington III Asks Whether School Bus Enforcement Is Safety or Government Entrapment, and Vows Federal Investigations

John Washington III, the 2028 presidential candidate, is demanding answers about how school bus stop-arm laws are being enforced, raising what he called serious concerns about reports and allegations involving old, inactive school buses allegedly being used to catch drivers passing when their stop signs are activated. In a statement headed "School Bus Safety or Government Entrapment?", he said the buses in question are allegedly no longer being used to transport children, yet are being operated in ways that result in traffic citations. "School bus laws were created to protect our children, NOT to create another revenue stream for city and state governments," he wrote.

Washington drew a hard line between the two purposes. "I fully support protecting our children," he wrote. "Any driver who illegally passes a school bus and endangers children should be held accountable." But, he added, "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 more money from hardworking Americans, he called it "a serious abuse of government authority."

He said the allegations would not be ignored under his administration. As president, he said, 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 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."

If an inactive school bus is being used primarily to generate citations rather than protect children, Washington said, the public deserves to know who authorized it, why it was authorized, and whether those citations were lawful. The statement, issued on the eve of the midterm elections, adds enforcement tactics to the accountability themes of his campaign; the allegations he cites remain, in his own framing, reports and allegations — and his demand is that they be investigated and answered in the open.