Man files federal lawsuit against Bexar County sheriff
A Houston businessman has filed a federal lawsuit alleging two Bexar County Sheriff ’s deputies conducted a “warrantless search without probable cause” during a traffic stop last year.
The complaint by Alek Schott says Bexar County uses traffic stops as a “tool to conduct searches and seizures without any reason to suspect the driver of a crime.”
Schott is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages against Bexar County, Sheriff Javier Salazar and deputies Joel Babb and Martin A. Molina III.
A Bexar County Sheriff ’s Office spokeswoman declined comment Monday.
Attorneys with the Institute of Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Schott, 37, on Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Antonio. The group’s website says its mission is to “end widespread abuses of government power.”
Schott is director of operations and business development for his father’s company, Springbased RMS Controls Inc., which supplies pipeline equipment to companies operating in the Eagle Ford shale formation of South Texas. He regularly drives through Bexar County as part of his job.
On the morning of March 16, 2022, Schott was driving back to Houston in his black Ford F-250 when Babb pulled him over for allegedly driving over the white line that defines the right shoulder on Interstate 35. Schott disputes that he crossed the line.
Babb asked Schott to step out of the truck to give him a warning instead of a ticket, the suit says. The deputy, after patting down Schott, directed him to sit in the patrol car, but his background check on Schott did not reveal any reason to detain him, the suit says. Schott has no criminal history and his driver’s license was valid.
Babb continued to question
Schott and explained that he was part of a “Criminal Interdiction Unit” and had parked alongside I-35 to look for human and drug smuggling, the lawsuit states. He eventually asked if he could search the truck.
K-9 unit called
Schott replied that he would “prefer not,” prompting the deputy to contact a “narcotics K9 unit” to walk around the truck, according to the suit.
While they waited, the suit says, Babb said that he stops 18wheelers “all day on normal traffic violations because, unfortunately … a lot of them” are moving people across the border and that “San Antonio is a hub for a lot of that crap.”
“These statements indicate
Babb’s role is not to enforce traffic laws but is to use traffic stops as a tool to investigate drivers and search their cars for other crimes,” Schott’s lawsuit alleges.
When Molina, a K-9 unit deputy, and his dog arrived, Babb told him that they had been “tracking” Schott’s truck, the suit says. The lawsuit says that statement was false because the truck had never been connected with any criminal or suspicious activity.
During a search of the truck’s exterior, the dog leapt up, placed its paws on the driver’s side door and barked. Molina reported on his radio that he had gotten a “positive alert,” though the suit alleges this was intentional and that the dog’s reaction was “not reliable” because of various factors.
Nonetheless, it prompted Babb to detain Schott in the back of his patrol car while the two deputies spent 40 minutes searching his truck without his consent or a warrant and without finding drugs or evidence of a crime, the lawsuit states.
After Schott’s truck was “ransacked,” the suit says, Babb returned Schott’s driver’s license with a written warning. It stated that Schott failed to maintain a single lane, and also indicated that “No Search” had occurred, according to the lawsuit.
Nothing wrong
traffic stop, but the deputy had his driver’s license, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit alleges that sheriff deputies “commonly stop drivers without any reason to suspect a traffic violation was committed.” It states that Bexar County paid an Oklahoma company called Desert Snow LLC for training “on aggressive methods for highway interdiction, including how to manipulate the circumstances of a traffic stop to extend the stop and search the vehicle.”
In the past two years, the lawsuit alleges, BCSO traffic stops that include searches have increased while the number of searches where contraband was discovered has decreased. The agency conducted 536 searches in 2022 but only discovered contraband in 115 instances, the suit adds.
Deputies in the Criminal Interdiction
Unit also perform more searches during traffic stops than other BCSO deputies, the complaint says.
Babb violated Schott’s constitutional “right to be free from unreasonable seizures because the deputy stopped him ‘without a factual basis’ to believe he had committed a traffic violation,” the suit says. It adds that Babb also extended the stop for more than an hour without any factual basis for doing so.
Schott also says the dog scratched his truck. Bexar County offered almost $7,300 to cover the damage, an amount he accepted, the suit says.
The suit seeks to permanently prevent the defendants from using traffic stops to conduct searches and seizures without any reason to suspect the driver committed a crime.