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May 10, 2026 — A federal jury ruled this week that Alek Schott’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when a Bexar County sheriff’s deputy stopped him based on an alert from a hidden camera network, then held him for 76 minutes and searched his truck. The jury awarded Schott $76 — exactly one dollar for every minute he was detained. The verdict is now drawing fresh attention to automated license plate readers and the secretive ways police use them.
Schott was driving on Interstate 35 near San Antonio in March 2022 when Deputy Joel Babb pulled him over. Babb said Schott had crossed the yellow shoulder line. Schott’s own dashcam footage showed he hadn’t.
The deputy placed Schott in the front seat of a patrol car and questioned him about a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border. When Schott refused to let officers search his vehicle, Babb called for a drug-sniffing dog. The dog alerted near the driver-side door, and deputies then tore into the vehicle, causing about $7,000 in damage. No drugs were found. A police report later claimed a “trace” amount was present.
Schott filed a complaint with the sheriff’s office. The response, according to his lawyer, was essentially: if you don’t like how we do business, sue us.
During discovery, Schott’s legal team learned what really triggered the stop: an automated license plate reader network had logged his truck during a one-day trip to the border. An unnamed law enforcement agent decided the trip was suspicious.
Christie Hebert, an attorney with the Institute for Justice who represented Schott, said the case exposed a much larger system than most people realize. License plate readers are mounted on mile markers, tow trucks, and even neighborhood poles. Every plate that passes is scanned and fed into a central database. Hebert said officers described people monitoring that database and flagging drivers who made quick border trips, with instructions to find a reason to stop them.
The data collected was strikingly detailed. It showed that Schott left with a female passenger and later dropped her off at a hotel.
Deputies in Bexar County were not using a formal dispatch system for these alerts. They used a WhatsApp chat called “Northwest Highway Group.” Hebert said officers would drop a license plate number or a basic vehicle description into the chat, and deputies would treat it as enough justification for a stop.
“The beautiful thing about the Texas traffic code is there are thousands of things you can stop a vehicle for,” Babb said in court, according to testimony.
Babb also admitted in a pretrial deposition that he waited for Schott’s truck after seeing a WhatsApp message, then pulled him over. The jury concluded that the stated traffic violation was a pretext to search the vehicle.
The jury did not hand out a massive damages award. It awarded Schott exactly $76 — one dollar for every minute he was unlawfully detained. That was the amount Schott requested.
“A jury looked at what happened to Alek and said what Bexar County did was not okay,” Hebert said.
She added that the verdict is an important win for the Fourth Amendment and for the rights of all Americans, not just Texas drivers.
Legal experts say the case should worry anyone who drives on American roads.
Angel Reyes, a Texas lawyer not involved in the case, said the government has always had the right to watch public roads. But that doesn’t mean it can pay a private company to do the same tracking and claim the Constitution no longer applies.
“The government can’t just pay a company to do the tracking instead and call that something different,” Reyes said.
Nikolas Guggenberger, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center, described license plate reader surveillance as incredibly intrusive. He said the system gives police an “ample opportunity for abuse,” including fishing expeditions — searching through data without probable cause and then trying to work backward to find a crime.
Kevin Harden, a lawyer at Harden Crichton, was blunt: “All Americans should be worried about indiscriminate government surveillance.”
Right now, police use of cameras like Flock Safety is legal, and so is using information received through encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp. Harden said police can act on evidence that arrives informally, as long as it leads them to a reasonable conclusion that a crime has occurred or is occurring.
But anonymous tips and chat messages are not enough to get a warrant on their own.
“Anonymous tipsters and messages are not enough to obtain a warrant absent other information that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a specific crime will or has occurred,” Harden said.
That distinction matters here, because Babb did not get a warrant. He used a traffic violation — one the dashcam contradicted — as the legal basis for the detention and search.
The case is unfolding as Texas officials face questions about how the camera network was built. The Texas Tribune reported that at least $30 million in grants helped fund Flock cameras across the state. That money came from a $1 fee added to auto insurance policies in 2023, with the stated purpose of fighting catalytic converter theft.
Governor Greg Abbott has since blocked state agencies from spending additional money on Flock cameras. But the cameras already in place continue to operate, and law enforcement access to their data remains largely unchecked.
The practical takeaway from Schott’s case, according to civil liberties experts, is that license plate readers work very differently from traditional police observation. A person can drive legally and still end up in a database, later flagged by someone they have never met.
Drivers also have rights during a stop. They can ask why they are being held, ask whether they are free to leave, and refuse to consent to a search. But proving that a stop was secretly generated by surveillance data often requires litigation, which is why Schott’s small verdict is being treated as a significant legal marker.
This is one of the first cases in the country to test, before a jury, what happens when police act on anonymous camera-generated tips coordinated through a chat group. The verdict applies only to Schott’s case, but legal observers say it could influence how courts view camera networks in future challenges across the country.
As more municipalities install automated license plate readers, and as artificial intelligence gets better at converting plate numbers into “behavior patterns,” the line between public safety monitoring and suspicionless tracking will only become harder to draw.
Schott’s message after the verdict was simple: “Simply driving across Texas isn’t illegal.” After four years of litigation, a federal jury finally agreed.
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and the Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
