The deputy informed Alek that he was “detained because of a positive alert” and ordered Alek to move from the passenger seat to the back of his patrol car. It shows the dog’s handler gesturing upward with his right hand and saying something a split second before the dog jumped up on the truck. But bodycam footage tells a different story. The deputy declared that the dog “alerted” to the presence of drugs. Then-to Alek’s shock-the dog jumped up and barked at his truck. He acted precisely the way police should want an innocent person to act. Twenty minutes later, the dog was sniffing around the outside of Alek’s truck while the deputy explained that the dog was there as “a reasonable suspicion thing” because Alek was acting “real nervous” and “wasn’t really giving me too much details of his trip.” Nobody watching the deputy’s bodycam footage of the conversation, though, could come to that conclusion. Instead of ending the stop, the deputy doubled down: he called a drug detection dog to the scene. Alek, who just wanted to get home, said no. He claimed that he does “behavioral analysis,” and while he has “been wrong before, there’s just some things I’ve seen that make me want to go a little further in the investigation.” The deputy then asked if he could search Alek’s truck. Alek calmly said no to each of these questions. He asked if Alek had marijuana in his car. human smuggling, drug trafficking, all those things like that.” Or, as the deputy put it a few moments later: “I’m out here looking for big shit.”īecause the deputy was never really interested in traffic violations to begin with, he kept questioning Alek. And the main reason is, I sit on the side of the highway and I’m out here looking for. “So, I don’t have to deal with all that crap”-“that crap” being traffic tickets. He admitted that he’s not really a traffic officer after all: “I’m on what’s called a criminal interdiction unit,” he explained. Alek calmly explained that he was driving home from a work trip and did not have anything illegal. Instead, the deputy started interrogating Alek about who he was, where he was going, what he had been doing, and whether he had anything illegal in his truck. Rather than having Alek wait in his truck during the stop, the deputy told Alek to “step out and sit in my passenger seat while I do your warning.” Alek complied, but the deputy did not immediately write the warning. At 11:15 am, as he was driving home on I-35 just south of San Antonio, a Bexar County sheriff’s deputy pulled Alek over for “drifting over that fog line pretty hard.” But video from Alek’s personal dashcam shows that he was not drifting at any point during the trip.
#San antonio traffic i35 south trial
Alek had spent the morning helping his customer conduct a trial of a special engine before starting his trip back to Houston. On March 16, 2022, Alek was driving home from a meeting with one of his customers near Carrizo Springs, Texas.
As part of his job, Alek regularly drives from Houston, where he lives, to south Texas, where one of the world’s largest oil fields is located. Lawsuit: Texas Sheriff’s Deputy Falsifies Traffic Offense to Justify Unwarranted Truck SearchĪlek is a family man and a father of two who works for his dad’s company selling specialized products to pipeline companies. Because if we the people must follow the law, government officials must follow the Constitution. In Alek’s case, the deputy failed to meet any of these criteria and instead used an unjustified traffic stop to probe into crimes Alek hadn’t committed.Īlek is partnering with the Institute for Justice to sue the deputies and Bexar County for violating his Fourth Amendment rights. Police must have a fact-based suspicion of a crime before making a stop, a valid reason to extend that stop, and either a warrant, consent, or an objective reason to believe there’s contraband inside to search a vehicle. The Fourth Amendment prohibits stop-first, justify-later policing. And moments before the dog alerted by jumping on the truck, the handler’s bodycam shows that he signaled the dog. Nothing about what he said was suspicious, but the deputy called a drug dog anyway. Bodycam footage from the deputy shows Alek gave the officer calm, mundane answers about a run-of-the-mill work trip.
Footage from Alek’s own dashcam shows he never drifted lanes. But they found nothing because there was nothing to find.įrom the very beginning, the traffic stop was unconstitutional. The dog allegedly “alerted” to the presence of drugs, and police proceeded to tear apart Alek’s truck. After interrogating Alek for ten minutes, the deputy who detained him called a drug dog to search his truck.
0 kommentar(er)
