School Bus Safety Officials Are Accused of Soliciting Bribes
Source: By STEVEN GREENHOUSE, New York Times, May 14, 2008
Four City Department of Education employees were charged in a federal indictment (.pdf) on Tuesday with soliciting bribes in exchange for promising preferential treatment, including on safety inspections, to bus companies that serve thousands of special education students.
...... The indictment said the bus companies, which were not named, had paid bribes from the mid-1990s to 2007 for a variety of reasons, among them to get reduced fines for safety violations and advance notice of inspections that were supposed to be unannounced.
....... Parents of special education children have complained for years about unreliable bus service as well as abusive treatment of their children by bus drivers and matrons.