Schneider said he suspects police leaders have shifted the debate about body cameras from accountability and transparency to efficiency in response to public disappointment over the lack of body camera footage made public.

Laws governing school bus stops vary across states and jurisdictions. The “stop-arm law” applicable in all states prohibits drivers from passing a stopped school bus with its red lights flashing and stop-arm extended to load or unload students. The law also defines and imposes penalties on violators.

Standards and guidance about the size of school bus stop ahead signs and other requirements in terms of retro-reflectivity or illumination, design, and colors to be used are also provided.

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Despite dozens of Canadian police forces embracing body cameras in the past decade, including police in St. Thomas and Strathroy-Caradoc, the public rarely sees the footage captured by the cameras, unlike in the United States where police often release it after high-profile events.

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London police Chief Thai Truong has said body cameras are an essential part of his plan to modernize the force and change the way service is delivered.

As laws around school bus stops are different across states, so are the penalties for violation. These penalties could be in the form of fines ranging from $30 to $10,000, license suspension, and a prison sentence. The prison sentence may be awarded on the first violation in some states and on repeated violations in others, and the length of the sentence also varies.

For instance, states such as Mississippi and Missouri impose a year-long maximum sentence for a first conviction. Louisiana requires violators to serve a 6-month sentence, Alaska a 90-day sentence, Delaware a 30-60 day sentence, Iowa a 30-day sentence, Wyoming a 20-day sentence, and New Jersey a 15-day sentence, at the most.

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London politicians should think twice before they sign off on body cameras for city police officers, says a leading critic of the technology.

Where it is a divided highway, motorists are not required to stop for a stopped school bus as long as they are in opposing traffic lanes. This rule does not apply to West Virginia, Mississippi, New York State, and Arkansas.

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Police often champion body cameras as a tool to enhance public transparency and accountability, a claim backed up by a 2015 study of police in Rialto, Calif., that found the use of the wearable technology reduced use-of-force incidents and complaints against police.

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Body camera footage is typically only released through freedom-of-information (FOI) requests by people asking to view footage of their interactions with police, or in court cases when the footage is presented as evidence.

Local jurisdictions may also have additional school bus stop regulations that cover aspects such as specific guidelines for kindergarten students, use of private roads and/or property, placements of stops on main arterials and cul-de-sacs as well as at corners/mid-block locations, the proximity of stops to railroad crossings , and provisions for providing transportation in hazard zones within a "no transport zone".

Additionally, road users generally expect school buses to stop at corners and are less likely to pass buses at corners than along a street. A corner school bus stop is much more visible to drivers than house numbers. Corner stops also give time to bus drivers to activate their warning system to alert motorists before getting to the stop.

The department’s request includes $4.2-million to equip its 326 front-line officers with body cameras and manage the massive amount of data the devices capture.

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The cameras – along with a digital evidence management system, patrol car cameras and other supporting technologies – will streamline policing duties, allowing officers to spend more time on policing and community engagement, Truong has said.

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MUTCD Section 7B.13 talks about installing school bus stop ahead signs in advance of locations where a school bus that stops to load or unload students is not visible to road users for an adequate distance and where it is not possible to relocate the school bus stop to provide adequate sight distance.

London politicians should think twice before they sign off on body cameras for city police officers, says a leading critic of the technology.

The warning by sociologist Christopher Schneider comes as city council prepares to begin debating the overall London budget next month, which includes a London police budget request that would grow to $672 million over four years.

All of the technology will be supplied by Axon, an Arizona-based company that develops weapons and technology for law enforcement.

Several reasons make setting up a school bus stop at a corner a good choice. Not only are children generally taught to cross the street at corners and not in the middle of the street, traffic control devices such as stoplights and school parking signs are also often located at corners. These alert and slow down motorists as they approach intersections.

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Axon declined to say how many Canadian police forces use its equipment, citing a policy of not commenting on contracts, but a company spokesperson said more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies around the world use the company’s products.

“Right now there’s so much red tape for Joe Public to have to go through to access their own footage, and that’s problematic for a lot of reasons,” Schneider said, noting the FOI process can be complex and time-consuming.

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In most states, motorists are required by law to stop for a stopped school bus irrespective of whether they are approaching or are behind the bus on a non-divided roadway. Washington provides an exception to this rule and allows motorists to pass a stopped bus on a roadway with at least three lanes, provided the motorist is in an opposing lane. A similar exception exists in Ohio but the roadway must have four or more lanes for the exception to apply.

Schoolbus stop sign

Stop-arm cameras are safety devices used by schools on school buses to protect students crossing the street to reach the bus or their home. A stop-arm camera captures images of front and back license plates as well as the face of the driver, thereby facilitating the identification of traffic rule violators.

But Schneider, who’s working on a new book about the technology and has written peer-reviewed academic articles about body cameras, takes issue with that.

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“Moving the conversation to things like evidence collection is a more benign way of talking about body-worn cameras. You get away from killing, you get away from police misconduct and brutality . . . whereas evidence collection is a more neutral way of talking about body-worn cameras,” he said.

School bus stop signs work by alerting motorists about bus stops where school children might be getting on or off the bus, thereby conveying the need to exercise caution when approaching. These signs are essential in ensuring compliance with applicable school bus-specific state laws, most of which prohibit crossing a stopped bus. The MUTCD recommends installing a school bus stop ahead sign (S3-1) in advance of school bus stops that may not be visible to road users for an adequate distance and cannot be relocated to command adequate sight distance.

“There have been numerous replication studies that have followed and some of these have found no statistical significance between officers wearing cameras and without cameras,” Schneider said, noting transparency and accountability are difficult to measure through research.

“The public is likely to be more favourable in relation to accepting body-worn cameras because it allows police officers to do their job more efficiently. And when we’re talking about a tax-funded organization like police, we want efficiency, right?”

“Police, because of privacy restrictions and legislation in the Canadian context, are less transparent with body-worn cameras than their American counterparts,” Schneider said.

“What they mean is up for debate, essentially,” said the sociology professor at Brandon University in Manitoba. “When police say transparency and accountability, politicians say it, when activists groups say it, they all sort of mean different things.”

Stop-arm violations attract pretty harsh penalties in most states and thus, stop-arm devices act rather well in discouraging potential violators.