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Reported on July 11, 2025 in San Antonio — A federal jury has ruled that Bexar County’s traffic-stop scheme, powered by automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) and anonymous tips, violated the Fourth Amendment. The verdict came in a civil-rights lawsuit filed by Alek Schott, a driver whose routine trip home became a 76-minute detention and an invasive search that found nothing.
Schott sued Bexar County, Sheriff Javier Salazar, and two deputies in 2023. He argued that the stop was not an isolated mistake by an individual officer, but the product of a county-wide policy. The jury agreed on the core constitutional violation: deputies had manufactured a traffic pretext to stop him because cameras and uncorroborated tips had labeled his travel suspicious.
Court testimony laid out how the operation worked. ALPR cameras first logged every car’s route and schedule. Then analysts or anonymous tipsters flagged ordinary travel patterns—like returning from a distant business trip—as worthy of suspicion. Deputies were dispatched to find a real or invented traffic offense that could justify the stop. Once stopped, officers questioned the driver and asked for consent to search. If the driver refused, a drug dog was walked around the car to create a supposedly enough signal for a warrantless search.
The Institute for Justice (IJ) represented Schott and described the practice as a routine that ran for four years. IJ attorney Josh Windham called it a form of mass surveillance reaching the highway shoulder. “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,” Windham said.
Schott’s ordeal began when a camera network flagged his truck as it traveled a long distance and stopped at a hotel. The San Antonio Current reported that the trip was flagged because of suspected human trafficking after a female colleague was dropped off there. Deputy Joel Babb later waited for Schott and pulled him over, stating he had crossed the fog line. Dash-camera footage played in court showed otherwise.
During the 76-minute stop, Schott was questioned, his truck was searched after a K-9 alert, and no contraband was found. Babb reportedly told Schott that “nine times out of 10, this is what happens”—a comment his lawyers said demonstrated how often deputies searched innocent people without findings.
The original tip came from a private WhatsApp chat named “Northwest Highway Group.” Babb said he thought the tipster worked at a federal fusion center in Laredo. The Associated Press later obtained more than 70 pages of those group messages, showing local and federal agents trading details about vehicles’ travel patterns based on little more than quick trips to the border region and back.
“This is what mass surveillance looks like when it reaches the shoulder of the highway,” Windham said. “This unit ran thousands of drivers through that routine—humiliating, invasive interrogations and searches of people who had done nothing wrong.”
Legal observers say the verdict also hinges on a basic Fourth Amendment principle: reasonable suspicion cannot come from vague, uncorroborated tips, and a dog sniff cannot be used to extend a detention beyond its original scope. In Schott’s case, the alleged traffic violation was proven false by video, which undermined the entire stop.
The jury awarded Schott $76 per minute of detention, or $5,776 in total. IJ attorney Christie Hebert said the small damages were meant to be symbolic. “Motorists across this country are being watched by local, state and federal agents, flagged by AI-powered cameras, and then pulled over for a bogus offense that exists only as a cover story,” she said. “The Fourth Amendment does not permit this.”
The timing of the verdict matters for Texas, where ALPR systems made by Flock and others have expanded rapidly despite privacy objections. Gov. Greg Abbott already paused state funding for Flock cameras in August and later ordered the Texas Department of Transportation to stop issuing new permits for ALPRs on state-owned roads. Municipalities including Bastrop, El Paso, Elgin, and Wylie have removed, rejected, or deactivated their Flock cameras. Others, like College Station, renewed contracts under public pressure.
Amarillo residents used city council meetings to question Flock’s presence. And Texas lawmakers are expected to consider guardrails for ALPR technology during the 2027 legislative session. The Bexar County verdict will likely serve as a reference point for those debates, showing that a jury can hold a surveillance-led policing scheme accountable when it crosses constitutional lines.
At publication time, Bexar County and Sheriff Salazar had not issued public statements on whether they will appeal. An appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals would prolong the case, but the jury’s finding on the county’s systemic practice stands for now. Civil-liberties advocates have already described the verdict as a warning: algorithmic suspicion cannot substitute for probable cause.
