A former suburban St. Louis police officer admitted that over a number of months final yr, he pulled over 20 girls’s automobiles and searched their telephones for nude images and movies.
In a take care of federal prosecutors entered Tuesday, former Florissant Officer Julian Alcala pleaded responsible to twenty counts of willfully depriving somebody of their proper to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. In trade, prosecutors dropped a felony obstruction rely.
The rely he pleaded responsible to is punishable by as much as a yr in jail. Alcala, 30, stays free on bond pending his March 11 sentencing.
In line with the plea deal, Alcala pulled over a lady in February 2024 and took her cellphone to his car, saying he wanted to take action to substantiate her insurance coverage data. As an alternative he discovered a video of the lady engaged in sexual exercise on her cellphone and texted it to his personal cellphone. He additionally discovered a nude picture of the lady and used his cellphone to take an image of the picture.
Over the subsequent three months, he took 19 different girls’s telephones again to his car throughout site visitors stops, purportedly to substantiate their insurance coverage or car registration, the plea deal states. He then seemed for nude photos and took images of ones he discovered.
He was caught after the primary sufferer seemed in her deleted texts and realized that the video of her engaged in sexual exercise had been despatched to an unknown quantity. She referred to as the FBI, which traced the quantity to Alcala. The FBI then executed a search warrant and located the opposite nude images, in response to the plea settlement.
Alcala’s legal professional, Scott Rosenblum, didn’t instantly reply to a Tuesday electronic mail looking for remark.