A jury in San Antonio federal court on Monday found Bexar County liable for running an unconstitutional traffic stop operation that harnessed mass surveillance to target drivers with a pipeline of pretext traffic stops and unconstitutional searches.
According to documents shared by the civil rights attorneys representing the plaintiff, records show that the Bexar County Sheriff’s Department conducted the operation for four years, targeting countless motorists.
The Current reached out to Bexar County Sheriff’s office for comment but did not receive a response by press time.
The jury found the practice violated the Fourth Amendment rights of Alek Schott, a Houston father of two who was stopped on Interstate 35 in March 2022 on his way home from a business trip.
Schott, a traveling equipment salesman for his family’s oilfield business, was flagged by Flock cameras for the type of business trip he frequently makes work.
On March 15, 2022, Schott stayed at a hotel before he drove home to Houston from a well outside Carrizo Springs. On the way home, a Bexar Deputy pulled him over.
The deputy held Schott on the side of the road for more than an hour while he was interrogated in the passenger seat of a police vehicle. Drug dogs searched his truck.
Because Schott had traveled a great distance and dropped a female colleague off at the hotel, the trip had been flagged as arousing suspicion of human trafficking, according to AP News.
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Department received a tip on Schott’s vehicle through a group chat on WhatsApp, called the “Northwest Highway Group,” which is facilitated by one of several “fusion centers” in the state.
Deputy Joel Babb, who made the stop, testified the information came from a contact he knew only as “Kiki,” whom the deputy believed worked at a federal fusion center in Laredo, according to Institute for Justice, which represented Schott in the case.
To make the stop, Babb parked on the shoulder, waited for the truck, followed it, and pulled it over.
As shown by the deputy’s body cam footage from the incident, Babb told Schott that the reason for the stop was that Schott had drifted over the fog line on the road. However, dash cam footage shown at the trial and shared on social media indicated that Schott never veered outside the lines.
“After the stop, I filed a complaint with the Sheriff’s Office because I knew what happened to me was wrong,” Schott said in a statement. “The department reviewed it, told me they didn’t see any violation, and said if I had a problem with it, I should sue them. So I did. Today is vindication, not just for me, but for every driver they ran through this.”
The jury awarded Schott the full amount he asked for, which was just $76 — one dollar for every minute he was detained.
“This is what mass surveillance looks like when it reaches the shoulder of the highway,” said Josh Windham, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. “An AI-powered camera flagged Alek’s plate. An anonymous law enforcement agent decided his completely ordinary trip looked suspicious. And a deputy went out and found a violation that never happened.
“This unit ran thousands of drivers through that routine — humiliating, invasive interrogations and searches of people who had done nothing wrong,” Windham continued. “It all rests on the idea that if you watch enough innocent people closely enough, criminals will fall out. That’s wrong, it’s unconstitutional, and now, a jury has said so.”
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