Public records offer new details about a Louisville Metro Police investigation into whether an officer used the city’s license plate reader network to aid federal immigration enforcement.
LMPD opened the inquiry into Officer Wesley Troutman after the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting found he listed a keyword related to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the reason for more than 100 searches he ran on the city’s license plate reader database.
KyCIR obtained public records that show LMPD Chief Paul Humphrey ordered the department’s Professional Standards Unit to launch the investigation on Halloween — four days after KyCIR informed LMPD of its findings and requested a comment for the resulting article.
The article published on Nov. 3. That same day, records obtained last week show Humphrey directed the Professional Standards Unit to expand the internal investigation on Troutman “to include whether he improperly shared his login credentials to LMPD’s FLOCK database with members of the DEA or others.”
An LMPD spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this report.
KyCIR uncovered Troutman’s searches of surveillance data collected by license plate reader cameras after obtaining and analyzing audits that recorded every search of LMPD’s database between March 2022 and July 2025. KyCIR's review revealed Troutman listed “ERO” – an acronym used by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, the unit that manages immigrant arrests and deportations – for 123 searches in March 2025.
The searches were made shortly before U.S. officials, including an agent with the DEA’s Louisville Field Division, announced they’d arrested 81 immigrants in Kentucky. That operation was “coordinated out of Louisville” and was part of President Donald Trump’s “Operation Take Back America,” a core component of the Republican’s aggressive efforts to deport millions of people.
LMPD’s array of license plate reader cameras photograph cars on local streets and come from the company Flock Safety, which lets police nationwide share access to data gathered in their respective communities.
News reporting, first by 404 Media and then by other news outlets, found some local and state police assisted ICE by running Flock searches for them or by granting federal agents direct access to their databases.
For example, Richmond, Virginia’s police department said this summer that a now-former employee granted access to their Flock network to an analyst with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who then used that access to make “queries for immigration enforcement.”
Local lawmakers react
Louisville Metro Council Member JP Lyninger, a District 6 Democrat, has said he thinks Troutman’s searches violate a city ordinance that restricts how LMPD can assist ICE.
If LMPD’s internal investigation determines Troutman did share his login information for the city’s license plate reader data with anyone else, Lyninger said he’d consider that “a grievous breach of public trust.”
“Flock cameras amount to warrantless surveillance of people of Louisville,” he said. “We have to have tight controls and to know who is accessing that data to make sure that it's not misused.”
Louisville Metro Council Member Anthony Piagentini, a District 19 Republican and minority caucus chair, said he doesn’t think the city ordinance prevents LMPD from sharing technology with ICE or any other federal agencies.
It’s common for local police to share information and technology with federal law enforcement, he said. But it should be done in a way that makes it clear who’s using the technology, rather than using someone else’s login as a surrogate.
“That gets confusing from a procedural point of view, because then you don’t know if that person is doing it or somebody else is doing it,” he said. “We don't want people sharing login information for any secure system, because God forbid you share it with somebody that shouldn't have access to it.”
The internal investigation is ongoing, so LMPD has not released a determination on whether Troutman actually did share his login credentials with anyone or if his license plate reader searches violated any department rules.
Public records show LMPD’s investigation of Troutman is not only looking at the 100-plus searches that used the ICE-related acronym, but also another 27 searches Troutman made that listed “Immigration” as the reason.
LMPD spokesperson Sgt. Matt Sanders previously told KyCIR Troutman’s searches using the “Immigration” keyword were actually related “to criminal activity, not immigration status” and that department officials “found no evidence of misuse.”
Records show Humphrey also ordered LMPD’s internal investigation to look at Troutman’s conduct related to June 19 and Oct. 28 memos he prepared “in response to official requests for a memo related to” his Flock searches.
