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Kids safety will be improved under police-bus program

If motorists in the Marquette area are entertaining thoughts of passing that stopped school bus up ahead, the one with the blinking stop lights on it and the children around it, and the manifest danger of such activity isn’t enough to dissuade them, here’s another reason.

A uniformed law enforcement officer might just be on the bus, someone who will take down your license number and vehicle description and write you a rather expensive ticket.

“We’re trying to get the word out so people know that if they do it, there’s a good chance there could be a deputy on the bus watching and they could get a citation,” Marquette County Sheriff Greg Zyburt said for a recent Mining Journal story on the matter. “The citations vary from $200 to $500 and it’s a three-point ticket.”

Zyburt said the effort relates to a conversation he had with a school bus driver servicing the Chocolay Township area, who complained about vehicles passing the stopped bus while children were getting on or off.

Zyburt came up with the idea of putting officers on buses to serve as witnesses of school bus related traffic violations, while having a patrol car nearby that could be radioed to stop a vehicle if needed, he said for the Journal story.

Currently, the arrangement is between the sheriff’s office and MAPS. But Zyburt said his department could open it up to other districts in the county, if there is interest.

We like this program, not only for the protection it affords children but because the people involved — namely Zyburt, the sheriff’s department and school district officials — were proactive in getting out front on a problem that everyone recognizes.

We hope the effort works out well.

— Marquette Mining Journal

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