--- title: "Jury Awards Texas Driver $76 Over Stop Flagged by License Plate Camera" description: "Alek Schott was held for 76 minutes while deputies searched his truck and found nothing. His lawyers now want a court order against such stops." author: "rews desk" published: 2026-10-08T19:42:30Z modified: 2026-10-09T10:30:30Z url: https://rews.cc/a/jury-awards-texas-driver-76-over-stop-flagged-by-license-pla-aee7d0 language: en tags: ["surveillance", "police", "ai", "privacy", "law", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Jury Awards Texas Driver $76 Over Stop Flagged by License Plate Camera *Alek Schott was held for 76 minutes while deputies searched his truck and found nothing. His lawyers now want a court order against such stops.* By rews desk · October 8, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/jury-awards-texas-driver-76-over-stop-flagged-by-license-pla-aee7d0 ## In brief - A federal jury in San Antonio found on Sept. 28 that Bexar County violated driver Alek Schott’s Fourth Amendment rights - Jurors awarded $76, $1 for each minute he was held during a March 2022 stop on Interstate 35 - A deputy cited drifting over the fog line, but Mr. Schott’s dash camera doesn’t clearly show it, and a search found nothing - His lawyers say a plate reader tip led to the stop. The sheriff’s office promotes its use of Flock Safety cameras - The Institute for Justice will ask Judge Orlando Garcia to bar the county from using baseless stops for searches A federal jury in San Antonio found on Sept. 28 that Bexar County violated a driver’s Fourth Amendment rights when deputies, acting on a license plate reader tip, pulled him over and searched his pickup for drugs. The driver, Alek Schott, got $76, which is $1 for each minute he was held on the side of Interstate 35 in March 2022. It’s the amount he asked for, [Ars Technica reported](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/driver-wins-76-after-alpr-led-to-bogus-traffic-stop-drug-searches/). The eight jurors found that the county stopped him without cause, dragged out the stop improperly and searched his Ford F-250 without cause, according to the [Houston Chronicle](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/bexar-surveillance-traffic-stop-verdict-22454299.php). They reached the verdict that Monday evening, about three hours into deliberations after a week of testimony, [Townhall reported](https://townhall.com/news/jeff-charles/2026/09/30/federal-jury-strikes-down-texas-sheriffs-surveillance-driven-traffic-stop-scheme-n2683825), citing another outlet. Mr. Schott was driving home from a work trip near Carrizo Springs when Deputy Joel Babb stopped him. “The only reason I’m stopping you is when I was watching over there, you were drifting over that fog line,” the deputy told him in body camera footage aired by [News 4 San Antonio](https://news4sanantonio.com/news/instagram/federal-jury-rules-bexar-county-violated-drivers-rights-in-license-plate-reader-stop). Mr. Schott’s own dash camera doesn’t clearly show any drifting. The Institute for Justice, the public interest law firm that represented him, was blunter. “Footage from Alek’s own dashcam shows he never drifted lanes,” the group said. “Bodycam footage from the deputy shows Alek gave the officer calm, mundane answers about a run-of-the-mill work trip. Nothing about what he said was suspicious, but the deputy called a drug dog anyway. And moments before the dog alerted by jumping on the truck, the handler’s bodycam shows that he signaled the dog.” The deputy put Mr. Schott in the front seat of his patrol car, wrote him a warning and spent more than 10 minutes asking about the trip and whether he was carrying drugs or large amounts of cash. Mr. Schott refused to consent to a search. After the dog alerted, deputies went through the truck for about 25 minutes. They found nothing. Mr. Babb has said he believed the tip came from a man working at a federal fusion center in Laredo, the Chronicle reported. It was not clear which company’s camera flagged the truck. The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office promotes its use of Flock Safety cameras. “This is what mass surveillance looks like when it reaches the shoulder of the highway,” Josh Windham, one of Mr. Schott’s lawyers, said in a statement. “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.” The firm says the stop was part of a practice that ran for about four years and caught thousands of drivers: plate readers logged trips, analysts or anonymous tipsters marked ordinary travel as suspicious, deputies cited a traffic violation as the pretext and a dog alert supplied probable cause when drivers refused a search. Those are the lawyers’ claims. The jury didn’t rule on them. Mr. Schott first complained to the sheriff’s office, which said it saw no violation. Officials told him, he said, “if you don’t like our policies and practices, sue us in court.” He did, filing suit in 2023 against the county, Sheriff Javier Salazar and two deputies. “Today is vindication, not just for me, but for every driver they ran through this,” Mr. Schott said after the verdict. “Money was never what mattered,” his lawyers said. “This was and has always been about the Constitution.” The sheriff’s office declined to comment to Ars Technica. It told News 4 San Antonio that it does not comment on active lawsuits and referred questions to the district attorney’s office, which had not responded. Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, called the case “a pretty quintessential example” of what turns up as the public looks harder at plate readers. “If there aren’t sensible guardrails and checks on how these powerful tools are used, they also create serious risks to public safety with drivers being improperly pulled over or stalked by officers abusing the tech,” he wrote in an email to Ars Technica. In a separate case, a federal judge has [ruled a warrantless Flock plate search unconstitutional](https://rews.cc/a/federal-judge-rules-flock-plates-search-was-unconstitutional-067653). The Institute for Justice will now ask the court to bar Bexar County from using baseless traffic stops to carry out warrantless searches. That decision goes to Judge Orlando Garcia of Federal District Court.