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EPS climbs aboard the school bus

Safety is a growing priority for the Estevan Police Service, and when it comes to the safety of students going to and from school, they don’t want drivers taking any more chances.
EPS school bus
The Estevan Police Service is teaming up with the South East Cornerstone School Division to begin the Yellow and Blue Program. Starting Tuesday, an EPS constable will be riding a random school bus with students to help combat motorists who ignore the stop signs when the bus is stopped.

Safety is a growing priority for the Estevan Police Service, and when it comes to the safety of students going to and from school, they don’t want drivers taking any more chances.

Beginning this week there will be a police officer riding random school buses with the rest of the students. That officer will be educating students about school bus safety while they monitor driving habits of morning and afternoon commuters around them. If the officer sees a driver violating the strict rules of the road that revolve around school buses, they will radio to nearby officers driving an unmarked police car who will then perform a traffic stop.

What EPS is dubbing the Yellow and Blue Program, which it is carrying out in conjunction with the South East Cornerstone School Division, was designed to reverse the trend the police have been seeing in which Estevan drivers are ignoring the stop signals of school buses.

EPS Chief Paul Ladouceur said the police didn’t initially see problems with drivers when the school year started, but after seeing a spike in the numbers of complaints, he said they had to look at someway of curbing that cycle.

“This is a bit of a unique program and a different approach that covers a number of things,” said Ladouceur.

“It educates the public that certainly it isn’t going to be tolerated. It engages students along with police because we’re going to use our school resource officers as the people who are on the bus. It’s two-fold, because they can be educating especially the younger students on various safety issues, while also be watching for people not abiding by the bus rules and violating the law.”

Ladouceur noted the City of Estevan very recently reclassified reduced speed zones around schools and parks to school zones, which means doubled fines.

“We initially didn’t notice a whole lot,” said Ladouceur. “It’s very interesting because only within the last two to three weeks we noticed a spike where we are seeing more and more people complaining about it.”

He said the police have consulted with the bus drivers and the school board, and they have also noticed people driving through the stop lights on school buses.

“Even personally, I’ve noticed people who have ignored them,” added Ladouceur. “One of the things by doing this is it’s very difficult for police to monitor the buses. If you have a marked police vehicle following the bus around all day, people generally abide by the law.”

The program will run randomly with different buses and will rotate with some officers riding during the morning and other times riding in the afternoon.

“The majority of kids in this community are younger kids who are taking the bus. I spoke with a Grade 1 class today and told them they may see some police officers on their school bus, and they’re pretty excited about that,” said Ladouceur. “Kids think that’s wonderful, and I think the drivers are pleased to hear about this happening because you can imagine their frustration every day when somebody fails to stop.”

It’s difficult for bus drivers to take down plate information of vehicles that drive through their stop signs, so for those who have the officer at their disposal for a day, that will be one less thing for them to worry about.

Ladouceur added that building relationships with young people and students is a positive thing for a police organization to do.

“This will improve the relationship with the police and students. It’s a unique environment. You don’t have a police officer in the classroom, but it’s a rolling classroom. It’s fantastic. It gives students a chance to feel more comfortable around the police and feel more comfortable approaching the police as well.”

Ladouceur said he has seen motorists in some cases slow down and make complete stops at buses, but then proceeded as though it was a regular stop sign. He reminds motorists that they are not able to proceed until the stop is retracted back to the bus.

“We address things as the need arises, and if we find that people aren’t getting the messages and the violations are continuing to occur, then we’ll continue to do this as long as we need to,” said Ladouceur.

“One of our first priorities in this community should be children’s safety, and certainly I’m more than happy to put our police resources in those areas as a priority. We’ll do it as long as we need to be doing it.”