Jeffrey Pribble, 48, a varsity football head coach and physical education teacher at Tracy High School in California's San Joaquin Valley, was arrested Friday after students discovered his cellphone secretly recording inside the school's locker room — a discovery made by students who stopped the recording, deleted the video, and turned the device over to a teacher before a parent's call to police set the arrest in motion.
The discovery was made Thursday when a student and several classmates found the phone actively recording inside the locker room, according to the Tracy Police Department. The students stopped the recording and deleted the video before turning the device over to a teacher. That evening, a concerned parent contacted Tracy police, triggering a response from school resource officers and detectives. By Friday, investigators had confirmed the phone belonged to Pribble, who was placed under arrest the same day. The Tracy Unified School District placed Pribble on administrative leave pending the outcome of both the criminal investigation and a separate district investigation. Pribble had been the varsity football head coach at Tracy High for five years and had worked for the district for 22 years. Tracy Police Chief Sekou Millington said the arrest reflected the department's commitment to protecting student safety and privacy.
"Our children deserve to feel safe at school and in every space where they should be able to learn, grow, and simply be kids. Protecting the safety, privacy, and well-being of our students is a responsibility we take seriously." — Tracy Police Chief Sekou Millington
The case follows a pattern of incidents involving educators and coaches secretly recording students that has drawn renewed scrutiny of how schools vet, monitor, and respond to misconduct by staff. What distinguishes the Tracy case is how the discovery was made — not by a school administrator conducting a sweep or by security camera footage, but by students themselves who recognized what the recording device was, took immediate action to stop it, and reported it through appropriate channels. Their response is the kind of student safety awareness that administrators say they hope to cultivate but rarely see executed with such clarity.
Tracy High Principal Jon Waggle sent an email to parents acknowledging the arrest of a staff member without naming Pribble or specifying the allegations. The district confirmed it was fully cooperating with police. Investigators have not publicly disclosed what, if anything, was recovered from the phone beyond what the students deleted, or whether additional victims may have been recorded at prior times. The specifics of what charges Pribble faces had not been released as of Saturday.
Tracy is located approximately 60 miles east of San Francisco in San Joaquin County. Tracy High School is part of the Tracy Unified School District, which serves approximately 15,000 students. Under California law, secretly recording individuals in a location where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy — including a school locker room — constitutes a criminal violation. Depending on the specifics of the recording and the ages of those involved, charges could potentially include invasion of privacy and other offenses carrying significant penalties.
A 22-year educator with five years as varsity head coach held a position of substantial trust over the young people in his care. If the allegations are proven, that trust was violated in one of the most fundamental ways possible — by secretly filming students in a private space where they were entitled to complete safety. The students who found the phone, stopped the recording, and reported it did everything right. The system that allowed this to happen undetected for however long it was happening needs to ask some harder questions about what oversight was in place.