Two Missouri Cops Are Facing Criminal Charges For Helping Themselves To Nude Photos Found On Drivers’ Phones

You can’t trust cops around your personal info, data, communications, or pretty much anything. Officers have a lot of power and access to plenty of databases filled with personal info. They abuse this power and access frequently.

Here’s some (recent) historical perspective. 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. 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. That same year, two cops were caught using law enforcement databases to gather information on women they hoped to strike up romantic relationships with. In 2004, a cop was fired for using database access to spy on his ex-wives. A 2013 investigation uncovered the extremely alarming fact that more than half of Minnesota’s 11,000 law enforcement officers had abused or misused data obtained from the state’s drivers license database.

So, it should come as no surprise this sort of thing is still happening. Here’s the latest, as reported by NBC News (h/t John Wesley Hall of FourthAmendment.com).

Two former Missouri officers were charged in separate, unconnected cases in federal court over allegations that they illegally searched women’s phones during traffic stops to obtain intimate, explicit images on the devices.

Julian Alcala, 29, who was employed as a police officer with the city of Florissant, is charged with 20 counts of deprivation of rights and a count of destroying records in a federal investigation, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri announced Thursday.

[…]

The U.S. attorney’s office filed a similar but unconnected case Tuesday against a former Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper.

David McKnight, 39, was indicted in the same federal court on nine counts of deprivation of rights and one count of destroying records. Federal prosecutors allege he illegally searched the phones of nine women from September 2023 to August 2024 while he was working for the highway patrol.

Both officers used similar tactics. They would take phones from female drivers under the pretense of helping them locate their vehicle insurance information. Once they had control of the phones, they would search for explicit pictures and send them to themselves, either via text message or by taking pictures with their own phones of anything explicit they managed to uncover during these pretextual searches.

McKnight, by comparison, is somewhat of an amateur. Earlier coverage of the case against Florissant officer Julian Acala by a local NBC affiliate contains this astounding revelation:

Each of the charges relates to one of the 20 victims, including another obstruction of justice charge. Alcala is also facing six federal lawsuits from women who accuse him of those acts.

The means and methods are contained in Acala’s indictment [PDF], which swiftly followed his resignation from the Florissant PD… which equally quickly followed a visit from the FBI to his (now-former) employer.

[T]he defendant took possession of Confidential Victim 1‘s cell phone under the auspices of confirming Confidential Victim 1’s insurance coverage and then defendant searched through Confidential Victim 1’s cell phone contents without a warrant or probable cause justifying the same, found a video depicting Confidential Victim 1 engaged in sexual activity, and sent the video via text message and iCloud from Confidential Victim 1’s cell phone to his personal cell phone. Further, the defendant searched through Confidential Victim 1’s cell phone contents without a warrant or probable cause justifying the same, and then took a photograph of an image on Confidential Victim 1’s cell phone which depicted Confidential Victim in a state of nudity with his personal cell phone. That image was found on the defendant’s iCloud.

And so it goes for the other 19 alleged victims of Officer Acala’s malfeasance.

No regular person would think they’re entitled to explicit photos found on someone else’s phone. What’s absolutely astounding is the fact that a public servant expected to hold themselves to a higher standard decided — repeatedly! — to recast himself as an exploiter, rather than a servant and protector. But what’s disappointing is that this is sort of thing we’ve come to expect from people in power, especially law enforcement officers who have more access to people and their personal belongings that any other public employees. And these are just the ones who have been caught. Plenty of others are still out there, exploiting people and their innate trust in government officers to help themselves to personal information and images.

Both officers have pleaded not guilty. And, if this were limited to just a couple of incidents each, that might be a believable plea. What’s represented in the indictments are just the incidents where investigators have found evidence to back their allegations. But it’s undoubtedly the tip of the law enforcement iceberg. Power corrupts and it seems no one corrupts faster than the boys in blue.