One official in Hempstead Town approved as many as seven school bus camera tickets per minute.

The same official also approved nearly 2,600 school bus camera tickets in a two-day period, data shows.

That's far faster and far more than the average reviewer in other counties, raising questions about the program's ticket review process in Hempstead, experts said. 

School bus cameras might catch errant drivers, but an enforcement technician must determine whether a violation occurred. That’s how the BusPatrol school bus safety program is designed: Automated enforcement is layered with human oversight.

But data obtained through a records request from Hempstead Town’s program demonstrates how quicklysome citation approvals were conducted, raising questions from experts about the thoroughness of the review process.

The data shows three technicians in the Town of Hempstead reviewed 3,963 potential citations on June 8-9, 2023, over the course of 20 hours, approving 99% of them. 

While that averages to about 198 potential citations reviewed per hour, ticket time stamps show a more detailed breakdown, with one technician, identified in records as No. 5658, approving as many as seven tickets in a minute. That technician also single-handedly approved 2,590 citations in those two days, while dismissing none. 

Experts said reviewing video and photo evidence for school bus camera tickets involve a more complicated and lengthier process than other automated tickets, like red light tickets, because there are several determinations to make. Those include where the vehicle was when the bus stopped, whether the stop arm was extended, whether the lights were flashing red and whether there were any exemptions that rule out a violation, such as a median.

Hempstead Town spokesman Brian Devine declined to respond to questions about citation review times, how common it is for that many citations to be reviewed, or whether the data raises any concerns. Instead he attacked Newsday for its continued reporting on the ticketing program, which has been the subject of numerous lawsuits. 

"It’s shameful and disingenuous for Newsday to continue to vilify a child safety initiative intended to protect the children of our communities as they travel to and from school each day, while simultaneously running a long series of reporting highlighting how dangerous and deadly Long Island’s roads have become over the last decade," Devine said in a statement.

Newsday has published a series of investigative stories evaluating road safety on Long Island. The Dangerous Roads stories have found more than 2,100 people were killed and 16,000 others seriously hurt on Long Island’s roads between 2014 and 2023. Newsday's reporting has also raised questions about Hempstead's school bus camera program.

The Town of Hempstead declined to specify how long a review takes. In at least one other jurisdiction, a technician takes an average of 20 seconds to one minute to approve or dismiss potential BusPatrol citations.

Suffolk County Comptroller John M. Kennedy Jr., who audited the BusPatrol- and county-run safety program in Suffolk from September 2020 through Dec. 31, 2022, said it's unusual that thousands of tickets were reviewed in that two-day time span.

"This seems like an inordinate number of violations being processed in what would be a normal workday. In order to preserve the integrity of the program, a technician should be trained and monitored, and ample time should be provided for a thorough review," Kennedy said.

Data from Suffolk shows that technicians there were also regularly reviewing large numbers of tickets and approving the overwhelming majority of them. In November 2021, the county's most prolific technician reviewed 5,781 tickets, which breaks down to more than 30 citations reviewed per hour, according to data obtained through a records request and provided to Newsday. That technician rejected five of those tickets, an approval rate of more than 99%. For the entire month of November 2021, Suffolk County technicians reviewed 18,139 bus camera tickets and approved 96% of them, county data shows.

Thomas Didone, a retired assistant police chief at the Montgomery County, Md., police department who later worked as a program manager for BusPatrolfrom 2021 until December 2023, said he never saw a 99% approval rate and questions the approval process for those days.

"Would I believe as a manager that they're being very diligent in reviewing the citations that they're approving? I would be skeptical," said Didone, who oversaw school bus safety programs in Georgia and in North Carolina.

At the Montgomery County police department, Didone was director of the traffic division, where he introduced the red light, speed camera and school bus safety camera programs.

In his experience, he said the most efficient school bus camera ticket approvers could review two or three tickets at most in a minute. He said reviewers can’t work nonstop in front of a monitor and need to take breaks to watch the videos, which can be as long as 10 seconds, he said. 

"It's going to ensure that you are approving with integrity ... You have to be able to watch the citation, make sure the things you're supposed to verify are in the video," he said. That includes verifying the location, the date, the time and noting whether the bus was completely stopped before the stop arm was activated, he said. "Did the car pass the school bus completely with the stop arm out, were the flashing lights activated, and were any officers or anybody waving traffic on," he said. "You can't just mass approve citations," he said in early June. 

Bus camera citations carry a minimum $250 fine, with Hempstead town receiving 55% of the revenue and BusPatrol 45%.

The BusPatrol school bus camera contract in Dutchess County, which was used as a master agreement for Hempstead in 2022, was transparent about how long an average review takes. 

It takes between 20 seconds to one minute to review evidence packages, according to Colleen T. Pillus, a spokesperson for the Dutchess County Executive Office, adding in an email that "individual review varies greatly from case to case due to circumstances/factors such as roadway design, traffic volume, direction of travel, obstructions, number of vehicles cited at stop, and weather conditions."One technician reviews from 105 to 210 potential violations daily, according to a 2022 resolution in Dutchess County.

An audit into the school bus camera program conducted by the Suffolk County Comptroller’s Office also revealed how bus camera citations are reviewed.

According to additional documents Newsday obtained via a records request, there are a few steps involved. A technician must match the picture with the license plate to the vehicle. Then a technician must watch the video and view three photos. In one of the interviews the comptroller’s office conducted, Chris Sierra, a BusPatrol research technician, said that "violations expire if they are not reviewed within thirty days of receiving from BusPatrol."

The Hempstead tickets reviewed on June 8 and 9, had offense dates of May 10, 11, 12, 15 and 16, but it's unclear whether that was a factor in the approval process. 

Newsday's Payton Guion contributed to this story.