ALAMO HEIGHTS, Texas – Award-winning KSAT reporter Jonathan Cotto was nearing the end of a 10-hour drive home from visiting family out of state on Sept. 4 when he was pulled over near Alamo Heights High School.
The late-night stop, which was recorded by an Alamo Heights police dashboard camera and body-worn camera, shows the officer informing Cotto that his registration sticker was expired.
After Cotto informed the officer he had recently completed his state inspection and was in the process of having his registration mailed, the officer issued him a warning.
But the four-minute stop was not without incident, as the officer used her electronic ticketing device to take a photo of Cotto without first explaining what she was doing.
“What’s the picture for?” asked Cotto after the officer had captured his image on the device.
“Just to say you were the one driving when I stopped you,” the officer responded.
A probe from KSAT Investigates revealed the image is one of potentially thousands taken of motorists by AHPD in the past two years. The images are kept off-site by a third-party vendor, AHPD officials confirm.
AHPD’s policy states, in part, that the photos are used as identification for potential suspects involved in crimes that have yet to be reported.
Cotto, who was not cited for a violation during his traffic stop, called the policy “heartbreaking.”
“What we’ve seen across our country and where we’ve been as a country, I think police departments should do everything in their power to work with the community they serve. And taking photos of people is something that’s very antagonizing and triggering,” said Cotto.
‘That is some hoaky, 1984 stuff’
Rebecca Webber, a Central Texas civil rights attorney, called AHPD’s policy “constitutionally suspect.”
“That is some hoaky, ‘1984′ stuff,” said Webber, referencing the dystopian novel by George Orwell that touches on topics including mass surveillance.
“I believe that he was subjected to an unconstitutional search,” said Webber, who pointed out that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
“Is this really helping the community, or is this just setting them up for a huge lawsuit? I have never seen a policy written this broadly,” said Webber.
Webber said she believed the officer in Cotto’s traffic stop violated AHPD’s policy by not giving Cotto the chance to refuse to have his photo taken.
The policy states if violators object to their photograph being taken officers will not force the issue and will instead document the refusal on the citation.
Days after Cotto’s traffic stop, KSAT Investigates requested a copy of all photographs taken of motorists by Alamo Heights police since the start of September 2021.
AHPD officials said it would cost KSAT $2,800 plus unknown additional costs for the department to download and process for release the 10,690 citation records.
AHPD officials have not said how many of the citations include photos of motorists, confirming to KSAT each citation would have to be reviewed individually.
AHPD officials declined to make Chief Richard Pruitt available for an interview for this story.
A spokeswoman for Tyler Technologies, the third-party vendor that stores and maintains the images, said AHPD determines how the collected information is used.
“The city of Alamo Heights is a long-time client of our public safety software solutions. While we provide the technology, how data and information are stored and utilized is determined by each agency to meet their needs and processes,” said Karen Shields, Tyler Technology’s Senior Media Relations Specialist.
What are other San Antonio-area law enforcement agencies doing?
Both the San Antonio Police Department and the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, our area’s two largest law enforcement agencies, confirmed to KSAT that they do not have a practice or policy of photographing motorists who are given a warning or citation.
Castle Hills PD has a photograph policy similar to Alamo Heights, implemented, in part, so that judges can properly identify a motorist once he or she comes to court, the department’s chief confirmed to KSAT.
“It has happened that a friend or family member will use an ID that isn’t theirs that strongly resemble someone else and then we discover that the person on the ID wasn’t even in the vehicle. We have even found on one occasion that a female individual was using her deceased sisters ID to avoid being arrested because she had outstanding warrants,” Chief Esteban Zuniga said via email.
Zuniga defended taking photographs of drivers only given a warning, stating that the warning is still a court document and is used in annual summaries including racial profiling reports.
Universal City PD and Live Oak PD photograph motorists, but only in instances when the driver does not have a driver’s license and his or her identity will need to be verified in court, those agencies confirmed.
A motorist in Cibolo raised similar concerns about questions asked to him by police and his picture being taken during a traffic stop there, in an interview with KSAT in 2019.