A former suburban St. Louis police officer admitted that over a number of months final 12 months, he pulled over 20 ladies’s autos and searched their telephones for nude images and movies.
In a cope with 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 12 months in jail. Alcala, 30, stays free on bond pending his March 11 sentencing.
According to the plea deal, Alcala pulled over a lady in February 2024 and took her cellphone to his automobile, saying he wanted to take action to verify her insurance coverage data. Instead he discovered a video of the girl engaged in sexual exercise on her cellphone and texted it to his personal cellphone. He additionally discovered a nude picture of the girl and used his cellphone to take an image of the picture.
Over the following three months, he took 19 different ladies’s telephones again to his automobile throughout site visitors stops, purportedly to verify their insurance coverage or automobile registration, the plea deal states. He then appeared for nude photos and took images of ones he discovered.
He was caught after the primary sufferer appeared in her deleted texts and realized that the video of her engaged in sexual exercise had been despatched to an unknown quantity. She known as the FBI, which traced the quantity to Alcala. The FBI then executed a search warrant and located the opposite nude images, based on the plea settlement.
Alcala’s legal professional, Scott Rosenblum, didn’t instantly reply to a Tuesday electronic mail looking for remark.