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A federal jury found that Bexar County was liable for a traffic-stop practice linked to automated license plate reader (ALPR) data, and awarded the driver who brought the case, Alek Schott, $76. The amount was deliberate: Schott asked for one dollar for each minute he says he was held on the shoulder of Interstate 35, which came to 76 minutes. The verdict is a damages award against a county, not an appellate ruling, and it does not on its own stop the practice the plaintiff challenged.
How a plate-reader tip became a roadside search
According to the Institute for Justice (IJ), the nonprofit law firm that represented Schott, he drove from near Houston to a well pad outside Carrizo Springs on March 15, 2022, to handle business for his family’s oilfield-equipment company. He stayed overnight and drove back the next day. Ars Technica describes the trip as a one-day turnaround, so the two accounts agree on the core facts: a short, routine business run.
The trip came to the attention of Bexar County Deputy Joel Babb through a WhatsApp group. The tip came from a person Babb knew as “Kiki,” whom he believed worked at a federal fusion center in Laredo. IJ says the tip rested on cameras that had recorded Schott’s license plate and travel. In other words, the suspicion did not begin with anything Schott did at the roadside. It began with ordinary movement that someone decided was worth flagging.
The stop and the stated reason
Babb pulled Schott over on Interstate 35 and said Schott had drifted across the fog line. IJ says trial evidence showed Schott never crossed the lines. Ars Technica reports that Babb later admitted the stated reason was bogus. The stop reason is therefore one of the points the public record contradicts, but the contradiction comes from trial evidence as IJ describes it and from Babb’s later admission as Ars reports it. It was not a separate ruling on that single question.
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Seventy-six minutes on the shoulder
IJ says Schott was held on the shoulder for 76 minutes and questioned in a patrol car. His truck was then searched after a drug dog alerted. According to IJ, the handler signaled the dog moments before the alert, and officers found nothing in the truck. Ars Technica also reports the 76-minute detention and the empty search.
The length of the detention matters for the verdict because the award was measured against it. It also matters for the Fourth Amendment question: a stop has to be justified at its outset, and a detention that runs longer than that justification supports is a separate problem. The sources do not walk through the legal analysis of the detention’s length, so this article does not either.
What the jury decided
The jury awarded Schott $76, exactly the amount he requested. IJ says he sued under federal civil-rights law, which lets people hold a local government liable when an official policy or custom causes a constitutional violation. That standard is demanding: a single bad stop by one deputy is not enough. IJ says the jury agreed that the county’s practice violated Schott’s Fourth Amendment rights.
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Several things are established by the announcements and reporting, and several are not:
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| Point | Who reports it | Status in this article |
|---|---|---|
| Jury awarded $76, one dollar per minute of the 76-minute detention | IJ announcement (September 28, 2026); Ars Technica (October 8, 2026) | Reported verdict |
| Deputy said Schott drifted across the fog line | IJ; Ars Technica | Stated reason; IJ says trial evidence contradicted it |
| Deputy later admitted the stated reason was bogus | Ars Technica | Reported by Ars; not restated as an IJ finding |
| Dog handler signaled the dog before the alert; nothing was found | IJ | IJ’s account of trial evidence |
| Five-step description of a countywide practice | IJ | IJ’s characterization, not an audited count of stops |
| Injunction against baseless stops | IJ said it would seek one | Not stated whether the court has ruled |
The five-step practice as IJ describes it
IJ’s wider description treats the Schott stop as one example of a repeatable sequence:
- Cameras record license plates and vehicle locations.
- Analysts or anonymous tipsters flag ordinary travel as suspicious.
- Deputies allegedly invent a traffic violation to justify a stop.
- Drivers are questioned and asked to consent to a search.
- If consent is refused, a dog alert supplies probable cause. IJ says the alert was manipulated.
This is IJ’s account of the practice, and it is the basis of the claim that the county had a policy or custom. It is not an independently audited count of how many stops followed this pattern. IJ’s language, including phrases such as “countless motorists” and “thousands of drivers,” is advocacy, and the sources do not supply a measured number of affected drivers. Readers should treat the five steps as the claim the jury accepted in this case, not as a documented rate.
What Bexar County’s published ALPR rules say
Bexar County’s public Flock Safety page describes how its ALPR system works and sets out access rules. According to that page:
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- Data is retained for 30 days.
- Access is limited to authorized law-enforcement personnel, in connection with a criminal investigation or a demonstrated nexus to one.
- Before acting on a hotlist hit, law enforcement must verify the plate in TCIC.
These are the county’s stated rules, not a finding that every practice in the case followed them. The gap between written policy and conduct is precisely what the plaintiff’s case put in question. The county page is also a live page whose figures can change, so the rules above describe what it said when accessed on October 9, 2026.
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What the quoted voices say
Schott described his decision to sue in IJ’s September 28, 2026 announcement: “After the stop, I filed a complaint with the Sheriff’s Office because I knew what happened to me was wrong. 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.”
IJ attorney Josh Windham, in the same announcement, said: “This is what mass surveillance looks like when it reaches the shoulder of the highway.”
Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Ars Technica by email: “The truth is that ALPRs create serious dangers for Americans’ civil liberties, and 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.” That is Laperruque’s policy view. It is not a judicial finding in this case.
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What happens next
IJ said it would ask the court to enjoin Bexar County from using baseless stops as a tool for warrantless searches. The sources reviewed for this article do not establish whether that request has been granted or denied. Readers following the case should check the court docket for the latest filing before assuming a remedy is in place. Even if an injunction is granted, it would apply to Bexar County and would not, on its own terms, bind other jurisdictions that use plate readers.
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The reporting also leaves open how widely the verdict’s reasoning will be used. A jury verdict against one county does not set a rule for other agencies, and the sources do not describe any appeal.
What this case does and does not show
The case shows a specific chain: a plate-reader-derived tip about ordinary travel, a stated traffic violation that the deputy later disavowed, and a search that found nothing. It shows how the civil-rights route works against a local government when a plaintiff can tie a series of stops to an official policy or custom. It does not show how often plate readers lead to bad stops, and it does not establish that the technology itself was the decisive failure. The tip, the stated reason, and the search are the parts the jury and the sources address.
For readers who work with ALPR systems or write policy for them, the practical lesson is about the link between data and action. A plate hit is a lead, and the county’s own rules say it must be verified before action. The case turns on whether that verification and the stated reasons for a stop match what happened on the roadside.
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