Traffic Cops Who Snooped Sexy Selfies Face Federal Charges

David McKnight and Julian Alcala were accused of separate plots to steal sexually explicit photos from women's phones during traffic stops.

Federal charges have been filed against two former Missouri police officers accused of separate plots to steal nude photos from women's phones during traffic stops.

Former Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper David McKnight and former Florissant, Missouri police officer Julian Alcala were separately indicted this month on charges of destroying records in a federal investigation and deprivation of rights under color of law.

Surely, our founding fathers never envisioned a world in which many people carried around tiny devices loaded with images of themselves in a state of nudity. But the constitutional right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure adapts to the times. And without a doubt, a police officer surreptitiously searching someone's photos during a traffic stop and then seizing them for himself is quite unreasonable.

Alcala Accused of Stealing Nudes From 20 Women 

Alcala is accused of illegally searching 20 women's phones in search of nudes in a period of just over three months. "Between Feb. 6, 2024, and May 18, 2024. Alcala took possession of their cell phones under the auspices of confirming their insurance coverage or vehicle registration, searched the phones for nude pictures and then took photos of the pictures with his personal cell phone," the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri alleges.

The photos he took were later found in his personal iCloud account, prosecutors say.

Alcala is also accused of texting himself a video from one woman's phone, then trying to delete a record of this text.

On November 13, a grand jury indicted Alcala on one count of destroying records in a federal investigation and 20 counts of deprivation of rights under color of law.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. But if nude images taken from these women were really found in his iCloud, it will be interesting to hear how he justifies this. ("I swear, your honor, nothing turns women on like being told their taillight is out?")

Victims Come Forward 

J.C. Pleban, a lawyer for some of Alcala's alleged victims, talked to KSDK St. Louis. One of the women he's representing is Victim #1 in the federal indictment, which says Alcala sent himself a video from the woman's phone and deleted the text from her phone afterward.

But the woman could still see the text in her deleted messages, said her lawyer.

"I think she just had a feeling that something was off," Pleban told KSDK. "Something wasn't right. This was taking way too long and when she checked her phone, she saw that [a video of her and her boyfriend] had been sent from her number to a number she didn't know at the exact time that she was pulled over," Pleban said.

The woman reached out to the FBI after this, Pleban told KSDK.

Some of the women whose images Alcala allegedly took pictures of weren't aware anything was up until they were contacted by the FBI. This was the case for a woman going by G.E.S., who is suing Alcala and the city of Florissant in federal court. The suit also accuses him of sharing her pics with others.

"The right to privacy is embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment and includes an individual's interest in avoiding disclosures of personal matters," states the lawsuit, filed in October. "The right to be free of an unreasonable search of unclothed photos on a cell phone by government actors, for no legitimate government purpose…is so egregious that any reasonable officer would have realized that searching Plaintiff's phone for photos of herself unclothed would offend the Constitution," it states.

McKnight Accused of Snooping on Nine Women 

McKnight was also indicted by a grand jury in November. He faces one count of destroying records in a federal investigation and nine counts of deprivation of rights under color of law.

"Between Sept. 1, 2023, and August 19, 2024, McKnight took cell phones from nine different women," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Missouri. "McKnight then searched the phones and used his personal cell phone to photograph nude pictures that he found," later deleting these images from his phone.

Prosecutors allege that most of the phones were taken from women McKnight stopped for traffic violations and that he took possession of their phones under the guise of verifying their identities or confirming that they had insurance coverage.

Over at Techdirt, Tim Cushing points out that these cases aren't the first we've heard of such behavior. "In July 2024, a female police officer was awarded a $1 million settlement after her fellow officers shared sexual content found on her phone during an internal fraud investigation," notes Cushing. "In October 2022, a police officer was indicted for using law enforcement database access to seek female targets to hack to obtain sexually explicit photos and videos. In October 2014, a bunch of California Highway Patrol officers were caught sharing explicit photos harvested from the phones of female arrestees."

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More Sex & Tech News 

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• Another parent has been falsely accused of sex trafficking by staff at Southwest Airlines.

• The Federal Trade Commission's latest attempt to pin an antitrust case on Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, will go to trial in April 2025.

• Tech "talent-poaching has become a crucial front in the battle between China and the West," reports The Wall Street Journal. "As Western governments make it harder for China to access sensitive technologies—a trend expected to continue under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump—many Chinese companies are trying to get ahead by luring away top engineers in areas such as advanced semiconductors and artificial intelligence."

• The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals won't revisit Ghislaine Maxwell's case with a full panel of judges, after a three-judge panel in September affirmed her sex trafficking conviction. Maxwell was convicted of helping Jeffrey Epstein abuse and exploit teen girls and sentenced to 20 years in prison. "Maxwell, 62, plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court," according to Reuters.

Comments

[Don't look at me!]

I’m going to have to review the evidence in these crimes to be sure.

[Chumby]

Welcome to the “Show Me” state.

[Bubba Jones]

Reason 637 not to hand your phone to a cop.

[peck_r_wood]

proof of insurance on a phone is the stupidest idea ever

[Ersatz]

^this!^
You may as well invite a vampire over for drinks

[CE]

I had a cell phone, but I accidentally dropped it in the lake on a recent fishing trip.

[mad.casual]

founding fathers

Fred Trump and J. D. Rockefeller? Or do you mean *The* Founding Fathers, you illiterate cunt?

The magazine can’t shitcan ENB fast or hard enough.

[Arn1]

“…you illiterate cunt?”

Would you talk like that to someone in real life?

[Alberto Balsalm]

Of course he wouldn't. I'm hoping Reason pulls the plug soon on non-paying commenters who have nothing to do but whine every day. I doubt most will pay and it will be hilarious to see which ones do pay to whine. This place is a useless sewer. Might clean it up a bit.

[mad.casual]

I’m hoping Reason pulls the plug soon on non-paying commenters who have nothing to do but whine every day.

“Hope in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets full first.”

A phrase I learned shortly after “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

The magazine prints abjectly stupid navel gazing pieces about the use of the royal we and second order conditionals on its masthead, and you morons are uptight about the word “cunt” in the comments. Neither accent of my elocution nor the height at which I hold my pinkie matters not one iota, you dumbfucks are your own problem.

[mad.casual]

On a side note, you guys do know that your author/member numbers are very close together and almost 4 times higher than mine, right?

Meaning that you're the Johnny-come-latelys here and you, suspiciously, signed up at almost exact same time.

[Alberto Balsalm]

It seems like there was a time, not too long ago, where I actually thought you were intelligent. Recently, you just post incomprehensible jibberish like this:

On a side note, you guys do know that your author/member numbers are very close together and almost 4 times higher than mine, right?

What the fuck does that even mean?? Get help, you psychotic cunt.

[mad.casual]

It seems like there was a time, not too long ago, where I actually thought you were intelligent.

No you didn't. This is a lie.

What the fuck does that even mean??

Not a big reader are you? You signed up fairly recently and at relatively the same time, strongly indicating that you aren't some 'long time lurker', at least by any standard that I and others around here would consider 'long', and you are quite possibly simply socking for yourself/Arn1.

Get help, you psychotic cunt.

Thanks for demonstrating my point. You showed up, squawked and flapped your arms because someone used 'the c-word', shat all over everything like a confused idiot, and then ended up using 'the c-word' yourself. You, like ENB, aren't nice or polite or well-mannered or intelligent or principled against foul language or some sense of morality; nor are you even very capable or reading and thinking critically. You understand how to screech like trained monkeys when someone says an offensive word and that's about it.

[5.56]

What you wrote was immediately comprehensible. Albert's ballsalami is just not that bright.

[Alberto Balsalm]

Way to show up socko. 5.casual

[Arn1]

"Not a big reader are you? You signed up fairly recently and at relatively the same time, strongly indicating that you aren't some 'long time lurker', at least by any standard that I and others around here would consider 'long', and you are quite possibly simply socking for yourself/Arn1."

That's funny. What would even be the point of such a low level conspiracy?

[mad.casual]

What would even be the point of such a low level conspiracy?

Confirmation bias. Loneliness. Legit MPD. Metric manipulation/eyeball inflaction. Ban evasion. Other malfeasance. Curiosity. Convenience. Permutations of any/all of these. There are lots of possible options, thus use of the word 'possibly'.

Again, you continue to demonstrate exactly how sub-par your reading and critical thinking skills are. I don't know why you do what you do. I just know that it's generally not for any of the reasons people visit these forums or support libertarianism. Even if it is just to put on the appearances of such.

[Arn1]

It would be funny if it was not a little bid sad.

[mad.casual]

Would you talk like that to someone in real life?

To someone who says things like “Sonograms detect electrical currents.”, yes.

Just because you confuse polite and nice for good or correct doesn’t mean everyone else does and, believe it or not, some people critically prioritize the latter above the former because you’d have to be shit stupid to do otherwise.

This isn't a boardroom or a Church and if you think nobody in any bar or strip club or concert venue or street corner or man cave or cigar lounge or construction site or locker room (men or women's) or call center or kitchen or barracks or bunkhouse or back lot ever talks like that, you're as shit-stupid as she is.

[mad.casual]

To someone who says things like “Sonograms detect electrical currents.”, yes.

And this is just scratching the surface. She’s defended mothers who drown their 3-yr.-old sons, serial rapists of infirm old women, adult child predators on the internet (and by that I mean like literal to-catch-a-predator/”The only reason you showed up here is to have sex with a person you know to be a 13 yr. old.”-type of situation not a vague, ‘she supports backpage.com’ euphemism), she’s doxxed people for harmless jokes, she’ll show off ‘birth material’ and say ‘There’s no body.’ even though the sample has obviously been cultured ex vivo/in vitro and the whole effect is that of a Nazi showing off a nice, clean delousing chamber to declare their innocence.

Shikha Dalmia was crazy but ENB is, fundamentally, not a nice person. The type of person who would intentionally burn down an orphanage and, upon learning her intentions were misplaced, traipse away with a “whoopsie!” and a clear conscience.

[JeremyR]

Surely, our founding fathers never envisioned a world in which many people carried around tiny devices loaded with images of themselves in a state of nudity

Ben Franklin probably did

[Gaear Grimsrud]

He was indeed a visionary.

[Thoritsu]

Excellent, another real, libertarian article, devoid of TDS! Keep 'em coming. I couldn't agree more with police overstepping or selling something that is legal and even encouraged to give away for free can't be illegal. Police are just citizens doing a job. They are not special people.

[NM Dave]

Sadly, they think they are, and this story is just one a hundreds demonstrating this. I am mildly surprised, though, that the usual group of copsuckers hasn't showed up defending this officer's perverted actions.

[Fist of Etiquette]

What are they, too good for Pr0nhub?

[Fist of Etiquette]

What are they too good for, Pr0nhub?

[Fist of Etiquette]

What, are they too good for Pr0nhub?

[Gaear Grimsrud]

I think that bears repeating.
What, are they too good for Pr0nhub?

[mad.casual]

But if nude images taken from these women were really found in his iCloud, it will be interesting to hear how he justifies this. ("I swear, your honor, nothing turns women on like being told their taillight is out?")

In Alcala's defense, it would seem that at least some of these women were willing to take it all off by virtue of owning a cell phone. Sounds like, in somewhat of a break from tradition, these officers are going to get what they deserve, but women who broadly keep naked pictures of themselves on their phones and then hand said devices over to strangers, regardless of The Founding Fathers' foresight, aren't going to learn a damned thing.

[NM Dave]

While you're right about the wisdom of keeping nude pictures, this cop deserves prison. Their poor judgment doesn't excuse his criminal action.

[Daddyhill]

Years ago (~2010) many allegations were made that Geek Squad lowlifes were doing this kind of thing while doing repairs. Should PC owners have known better than to keep nude images and videos on a machine and then hand it over to an unknown stranger? Who knows how to find quickly and then copy the stuff they like? Especially after USB sticks became ubiquitous?

This is called blaming the victim, mad.casual, and lets cops and geeks off the hook, free of our common obligation to behave as moral agents even when no one is watching. Theft is theft; it's taking stuff to which we have no right from someone whose property rights we have a moral duty to respect.

Yes, cops are just people, but we do expect them to operate with a somewhat deeper and fuller understanding of, and commitment to, all law, whether common or statutory. By now it seems obvious that the police will not necessarily protect us from many of the harms we fear most. But we can still insist that they serve us by respecting the same laws they can arrest us for breaking.

[mad.casual]

First, it's not victim blaming. ENB's retardation was hypothetical and nonsensical to a nonsensical. Asserting it's victim blaming in earnest is like saying I blamed the Jews for Hitler bombing Pearl Harbor.

Second, intentionally or not, it distracts from the actual issue from a position that is explicitly corrosive to these and other women's agency and people's rationality in general. The officers didn't force any of these women to get naked. The, arguably, didn't force any of them to hand over their phones. They did trick them. Half the solution to a trick is to punish the tricksters. The other half of the solution is to ensure the victims understand how they were tricked. ENB's assertion of "The cops forced them to get naked and take pictures to take pictures of the pictures because, allegedly, their taillights were out." ignores the fact that these women, entirely legally on their behalf, participated in the theft of their own property.

You and ENB may want to keep your retarded clusterfuck of women taking nudes and unwittingly handing them over to the police so that you can punish police officers at the taxpayers' expense, but that doesn't mean everyone does.

[Vondy]

Alternate Headline: Cops Held Accountable. System Working.

[CE]

What part of "persons, houses, papers, and effects" do they not understand?

[markm23]

If I kept nude selfies on my phone, and I handed it to a cop, and he clawed his own eyes out, could I be charged with assaulting and maiming a police officer?

[NM Dave]

Nude pics of me would, no doubt, result in charges like this. Maybe I'll take a few.