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A Houston area man, who won his Fourth Amendment case against the Bexar County sheriff's office, spoke to reporters on Tuesday at the federal courthouse, urging others to use his court victory to battle for their constitutional rights too.
Alek Schott, who was traveling for his oil industry job as president of RMS Controls, said there was no probable cause for his I-35 stop in March 2022 by local sheriff's deputy Joel Babb or the search or interrogation that followed.
He and his attorneys, Christie Hebert and Jeff Rowes of the Texas Office of the Institute for Justice, said roadside federal surveillance cameras, Schott's ordinary trip in a black Ford 250 pickup to near the border and back, an anonymous tip, a K-9 alert from a manipulated dog, and an invented traffic violation all set the scene for the unlawful stop.
The attorney's said Babb told Schott he was stopped because he allowed his pickup to drift across a fog line on the road, but evidence at the trial showed he never did so.
The local jury, who heard the case in Federal Judge Orlando Garcia's court this week, agreed the stop was unconstitutional.
"I was returning from a work trip. Just driving back, not realizing there was an entire surveillance network for license plate readers, just marking people to be targeted on their journeys home," he said. "So, I was just traveling back home, trying to get back to my family and my kids and spent 76 minutes detained by the side of the road for doing nothing wrong."
Nothing unlawful was found in Schott's truck either, his attorneys said. He said he sued for only $76, one dollar for each minute he was detained, because he wanted his case to be about justice and not monetary reward.
Hebert said the case was not about tough law enforcement using high tech to fight crime, but rather unconstitutional "dragnet" style tactics.
"They targeted ordinary people with the idea that if they can get into as many cars as possible, they would find evidence of some crime and that's not what the Fourth Amendment allows," she said. "The Fourth Amendment requires searches to be reasonable."
Schott's attorneys now plan to ask Judge Garcia to order the sheriff's office to halt traffic stops using the same method. They also said they stand prepared to sue law enforcement agencies on the behalf of others who are treated as Schott was.
Texas Public Radio reached out to the sheriff's department for comment, but the agency does not comment on active lawsuits and referred TPR to the Bexar County District Attorney's Office. TPR did not hear back from them by publication time.
