DRUNKS PUNKS & PERVS
News probe finds worst city school bus drivers
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza recently hailed the city’s school bus system as “exceptionally impressive” and a “a well-oiled machine.”
Looks like he missed a few major bumps in the road.
A Daily News investigation, based on documents and interviews, uncovered at least a half-dozen school bus drivers permitted to ferry busloads of kids despite serious criminal pasts — including a number of DWIs.
One driver did two years in prison for burglary, while another crashed his car while driving drunk. A third installed a hidden camera to catch a young woman showering. A fourth threatened to kill his pregnant ex-girlfriend during a physical assault. And a fifth was arrested a staggering 13 times.
None were ever at risk of losing their jobs and would have avoided detection if they didn’t come up for recertification — and cross paths with a dogged retired NYPD detective named Eric Reynolds.
Reynolds, working as an investigator in the Office of Pupil Transportation, noticed the criminal records, interviewed the drivers and refused to recertify them after exposing the disturbing details of their criminal pasts.
The cases offer only a few examples of a larger problem lurking in the roster of the roughly 8,500 drivers and 3,000 attendants employed by the private bus companies that serve the sprawling school bus system, according to Reynolds. The vetting process, he says, is historically too lax to weed out problem drivers.
But Carranza, who spent much of last week dealing with fallout from the city’s busing crisis at the start of the school year — with hundreds of children left stranded — defended the background checks.
“We do have a vetting process,” Carranza insisted Friday. “They are fingerprinted, so there is a process.”
Reynolds decided to go public because he feels the city Education Department has failed to address its problems in oversight and vetting of prospective drivers with sufficient urgency. He also believes the bus companies’ own background checks into their drivers are near nonexistent, and that the companies sometimes send applicants to the Education Department despite knowledge of a criminal past — including for sex offenses.
“Without a doubt, these cases show there needs to be a comprehensive review of every driver and attendant to see if there are others on the job with substantial criminal records,” he told the Daily News. “The system needs to be completely overhauled, but the [Education Department] is not equipped to do it. They don’t have the expertise or the will. It has to be done by a separate law enforcement agency.”
A second source familiar with the situation said a more thorough review of future drivers is critical.
“You don’t really know who is on the buses,” the source said. “This issue has been raised numerous times and it falls on deaf ears.”
The bus companies either declined to comment or did not return phone calls.
School bus company officials noted privately that the pool of prospective drivers diminished in recent years because many candidates opted to work for Uber and other ride-sharing outfits.
“It’s a fact. Companies around the city are short drivers,” said one exec who asked to remain anonymous. “Every company is short drivers. If a flu epidemic breaks out, these companies are in trouble.”
Yet the bus company officials insisted the background checks are substantial. And a criminal record does not guarantee a bad employee, according to one official.
“If a guy got caught fondling a kid he ain’t getting a job,” the official said. “But a guy beat someone up who was fondling a kid – that guy you want on the job.”
A second executive recalled hiring a driver who put another man in the hospital under extenuating circumstances.
“Some guy was trying to rape his daughter and he intervened and he beat the guy into coma – that’s the kinda guy I want working on my bus,” he said.
Driver Jacinto Mera, 64, is not that kind of guy.
He drove for Pride Transportation starting in September 2013. Court records show that in August 2014, Mera duct-taped a hidden Samsung video camera inside a bottle of shampoo and placed it in the shower to get footage of his daughter’s 23-year-old female friend showering. The young woman spotted the camera and called the cops, with Mera pleading guilty in return for three years’ probation.
Mera stopped driving in 2015 for unrelated reasons. Then in 2017, Pride proposed him for recertification, despite the existing conviction. On his application, he checked a box to say he had never been charged or convicted of a criminal offense.
A records check caught the lie, and Mera acknowledged his creepy crime and was denied.
Reynolds said Mera initially claimed there was a romantic connection with the victim. “He made it sound consensual,” he said. “He said, ‘Me and this girl, we had a thing for each other.’ But I found out what actually happened. It must have been humiliating for his daughter.”
Dayquan Bentley, 32, had four years in with Empire Charter Service when he met with Reynolds for a 2017 recertification interview. His records showed a 2016 conviction for punching a big hole in a kitchen door at his grandmother’s house. “Now I need to f---k you up,” he bellowed, the records show.
Court records also show he punched a wall and broke figurines in March 2008 at his grandmother’s house. “If she wasn’t my grandmother, I’ll f--k her up,” he told police. He was convicted in 2009 and spent 15 days in jail.
But Bentley had a story for the hulking Reynolds: He was the victim, framed by his grandmother. “He claimed one of his arrests was for sleeping on a couch and his grandma hit him with the lead pipe in the head,” said the ex-detective. “He said she then went to the cops and convinced them to give her an order of protection.”
Reynolds knew that courts, not the police, issue those orders. “What really happened was she locked him out and he smashed the place up,” Reynolds said. “He was entertaining. He had some good stories.”
And, as it turns out, that was one of just six convictions. There was a June 2014 drunken driving bust where Bentley was so sloshed that he was swaying on his feet — and refused to take a breath test. Three years later, he pleaded guilty.
There was more: Six refusals to submit to a breath test, a ticket for failure to wear his seat belt.
Another driver, Eric Izquierdo, 45, has been driving kids for Allied Transit Corp. since 2012. After five years at the wheel, he came up for recertification last year.
A records check revealed that he served two years in prison for a 2006 burglary and had disclosed it on the application without revealing the details as required.
When Reynolds brought him in for an interview, Izquierdo claimed his arrest was a big misunderstanding with an ex-girlfriend. He returned to her apartment to retrieve his stuff, and the angry ex called the cops. The details were otherwise sketchy because of a traumatic brain injury suffered by the driver.
A skeptical Reynolds called the cops who handled the case, and learned in fact Izquierdo was stealing tools from a janitor’s closet in an office building. Indeed, court records show Izquierdo was convicted of stealing tools, sunglasses, a cell phone and light fixtures from a Wall Street building. And, oh — Izquierdo had 13 other arrests dating from 1989 to 2006, including for drunken driving, weapons possession and a home invasion using a gun in 1996.
“How does he get prequalified?” Reynolds asked in disbelief. “I told them we can’t accept this guy.”
Driver Ralph Satterwhite, 35, of Queens, had five arrests in 2014, including for ignoring an order of protection and harassment involving a former romantic partner. The past was no impediment when he was hired by Leesel Transportation in November 2017.
Court records indicate that in August 2014, Satterwhite violated an order of protection obtained by his five-month pregnant girlfriend, smashed her cell phone and threatened to kill her and her baby.
A month later, he grabbed her glasses and ripped them off her face and then painfully squeezed her cheeks together, court records show. He pleaded guilty in both cases.
“He tried to bulls--t me, claimed that he didn’t put his hands on the woman,” Reynolds said. “But I looked at the documents and saw that he had.”
Further digging showed that he also had a DWI on his record after crashing his 1995 Mercedes-Benz in the wee hours of August 2009 on the Nassau Expressway.
Satterwhite admitted to Police Officer Keith Penney downing two glasses of Absolut vodka before climbing behind the wheel, records show.
”He was screaming in the interview that there were drivers out there with worse records than him,” Reynolds said. “I said you’re right about that and I’m going to do something about it.”
A cousin of Satterwhite defended her kin: “Ralph is good. The women that he gets involved with, there’s something wrong with them. You know how some women get.”
Felix Rodriguez, now 49, had been driving for some years when he came up for recertification. But investigators found that he pleaded guilty to drug possession as recently as 2014. And there were 10 other arrests, including a 2013 drug bust, a 2012 purse snatching and a 1990 robbery of Chinese-food from a deliveryman.
“My conclusion is they [Education Department] don’t really give a s--t about these kids,” Reynolds said. “The things that are priorities astound me. We have found the enemy and the enemy is us.”