A scheme involving pretextual traffic stops and invented traffic violations, run by a sheriff’s office in Texas, has been blasted by a federal court jury.
“This is a huge win, and not just for [client] Alek,” said Institute for Justice lawyer Christie Hebert. “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 for an interrogation and a search. The Fourth Amendment does not permit this. Today a jury of Texans looked at how this program actually worked and said so. Every agency in this state should understand that we are fully prepared to enforce this verdict.”
VICTORY: A federal jury found Bexar County liable for running an unconstitutional traffic-stop scheme fueled by license plate surveillance and pretextual stops.
This is a major victory for privacy, accountability, and the #4thAmendment.
🧵 pic.twitter.com/Wqt0jZJrlT— Institute for Justice (@IJ) September 29, 2026
The IJ explained how the scheme, found in Bexar County which was determined to be liable for the unconstitutional agenda, worked:
“First, surveillance cameras across the state and country recorded license plates and logged when and where cars went. Second, analysts and anonymous tipsters flagged ordinary travel, like driving toward the border and back, as suspicious. Third, Bexar County sheriff’s deputies invented a traffic violation to justify pulling over the flagged driver. Fourth, deputies pulled drivers into their front seats, interrogated them and asked consent to search their car. Finally, fifth, if the driver refused to consent to a search, a K-9 alert from a manipulated dog supplied the probable cause to search anyway. This practice happened for four years to countless motorists.”
The case was on behalf of program victim Alek Schott, a Houston father of two who was detained on Interstate 35 in 2022 on a business trip.
“Schott was held on the shoulder for 76 minutes, interrogated in the front seat of a patrol car, and subjected to a search of his truck after a drug dog alerted. Deputies found nothing, because there was nothing to find,” the IJ confirmed.
He was stopped by Bexar County Deputy Joel Babb on his way home — “not for anything he did on the road, but because a network of cameras operated by the federal government flagged his Ford F-250 as suspicious,” the IJ said.
A “tip” ‘coming from “Kiki” had been forwarded to Babb, who followed the truck, made an allegedly false claim Schott “drifted” across a road line, which evidence showed he didn’t, and stopped him.
When he complained, county officials claimed they did nothing wrong, a decision now overturned by a federal court jury.
The jury found a pattern of illegal stops and awarded Schott $76, a dollar for every minute he was detained. The IJ said he didn’t ask for anything more.
“This is what mass surveillance looks like when it reaches the shoulder of the highway,” said IJ Attorney Senior Josh Windham. “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. 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.”
The IJ now will ask the court to halt Bexar County’s agenda for “baseless traffic stops.”
