A Times-Union investigation into the criminal and driving records of Jacksonville Transportation Authority bus drivers has led to three JTA employees losing their jobs.
Executive Director Michael Blaylock confirmed this week that transportation superintendent Charolette Hall, risk manager Joseph Lewis and bus operations analyst Roxanne Capehart are no longer employed there.
Hall and Lewis both resigned, although Blaylock said they were told they’d be fired if they didn’t resign. Capehart said she was fired after she refused to resign.
The three are being held responsible for not doing a better job of screening bus drivers, Blaylock said. He declined to go into more detail.
Lewis was paid nearly $87,000 a year, and Hall’s salary was $84,000. Capehart made $44,000 a year.
The Times-Union has been investigating the backgrounds of JTA bus drivers for months. The full investigation is scheduled to be published in Sunday’s Times-Union.
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The results include dozens of drivers who had violent crime arrests, as well as many who were cited for driving without valid licenses. Some of those issues occurred while the drivers were employed at JTA. Before the Times-Union investigation, the agency did not do checks for criminal arrests after a driver was hired.
The project began after a passenger was run over and killed by a JTA bus in October downtown.
Alexander Gibbs had gotten off the bus with his cane, and driver Betty Andrews forgot to turn the wheels back straight and drove over the curb, hitting him, two signs, a fence and an oak tree before stopping.
The driver had a history of traffic incidents. She received a reprimand and a seven-day suspension after her first accident in 2001. In 2002, she scraped a pole. She also received remedial training after the handicapped ramp on her bus hit a passenger trying to board in 2007 and again that year for hitting a concrete barrier.
In her last accident prior to Gibbs’ death, Andrews swiped a pole with a passenger-side mirror in May 2010 and had to undergo advanced driving skills training.
Andrews was fired after running over Gibbs.
The authority also fired Sheldon Monte Ford in May 2010 after he was accused of sexual assaulting a 12-year-old girl on his bus. JTA records showed Ford had been reprimanded, but not fined or suspended, in 2001 for making inappropriate advances on a 15-year-old girl.
Blaylock said this week JTA began looking into the records of bus drivers when it became aware of the Times-Union investigation. He determined JTA has not done a good job screening its drivers, and expressed concern about the records of some people driving its buses.
“We’re going to make changes,” he said. “It’s my responsibility to fix this.”
The agency had a policy that called for annual driver’s license checks, but JTA spokeswoman Shannon Eller said the policy “was not always followed by those responsible.” She also said drivers were required to report “any arrests or loss of license.”
Eller said JTA checked criminal records before hiring employees but couldn’t explain why some of the drivers with violent crime arrests were hired. The agency implemented a policy change on Jan. 1 to do regular criminal background checks on its employees.
Blaylock also said JTA will no longer hire bus drivers with violent crime arrests, and checks on driver’s licenses will occur more regularly.
In an email to the Times-Union, Lewis expressed disappointment with his removal and said a revised process for verifying whether a driver’s license was valid was in the works when he lost his job.
“I think it will go a long way in identifying bus operators that should not be driving,” he said.
Capehart said she was once responsible for checking on whether bus drivers had valid licenses, but that responsibility was taken away in January 2011 and given to risk management. She said she is considering suing JTA for wrongful termination.
“I feel I’m being scapegoated for a lot of things that aren’t my fault,” she said.
No one ever told her she was doing a bad job, or had failed to perform her duties, until the day she was fired, Capehart said.
Hall could not be reached for comment.
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