At first, officials at the state’s two largest universities didn’t want to disclose the locations of their license plate reader cameras, a powerful and increasingly popular surveillance tool among law enforcement nationwide.
University staffers argued that providing that information to the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting could compromise police investigations and endanger officers, faculty and students.
But they changed course after KyCIR sent appeals to the state’s attorney general arguing the universities’ refusal to provide the information violated state open records laws.
Records provided by the University of Louisville show campus police operate 14 license plate readers from West Bloom St. south to Central Ave.
In Lexington, University of Kentucky records show police maintain 15 cameras from the Historic South Hill neighborhood down to Kroger Field.
The details help illustrate the scope of license plate reader usage in Kentucky’s largest cities. While police in Lexington publish a map of their cameras, Louisville Metro police refuse to provide camera locations. In Louisville, police maintain a network of nearly 200 cameras. Some can be tracked through permitting records. Many, however, cannot. When coupled with the patchwork of homeowner associations that also utilize license plate reader technology, the blanket of hidden surveillance in the city is largely unknown.
The universities’ initial push for secrecy is not unusual. Along with Louisville Metro, police in Elizabethtown and Bowling Green also refused to provide KyCIR with records showing where license plate readers are installed. KyCIR is asking Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman to review those agencies’ refusal to provide records.
License plate readers collect data about passing cars and store the information in a database searchable by police, who often say it’s an invaluable tool to find stolen cars or suspects in criminal investigations.. As their ubiquity grows, the technology is also attracting controversy.
License plate readers made by the company Flock Safety allow police agencies to share access to the information the cameras collect in their respective communities, enabling nationwide searches of license plate data. Many police departments, including LMPD, UK and U of L, use Flock cameras.
As 404 Media first reported, some agencies have run searches related to immigration enforcement – at a time when President Donald Trump is ramping up arrests and deportations of immigrants. KyCIR revealed in November that a Flock account belonging to an LMPD officer listed immigration-related keywords as the reason for 150 searches of Louisville’s license plate reader database in February and March 2025.
In light of KyCIR’s reporting, LMPD Chief Paul Humphrey launched an internal investigation. Investigators determined LMPD officer Wesley Troutman shared his Flock password with a DEA agent named Marcus White because they worked narcotics cases together. The DEA agent then used Troutman’s account, without his knowledge, to run the immigration-related searches. Troutman and two other LMPD employees, Nicholas Owen and Jeremy Ruoff, were disciplined due to the internal investigation’s findings.
LMPD announced last month that it’s strengthening its policy on password-sharing to clarify that giving out such information is prohibited for any system it uses. The agency also said it instituted safeguards to prevent its license plate reader database from being used for immigration-related inquiries again.
But the agency is not backing off its claim that disclosing the locations of the cameras could hamper police work. An LMPD spokesperson recently warned a reporter with the Courier Journal that publishing camera locations “is reckless and endangers the public. It hands criminals a blueprint to avoid detection, evade arrest and undermine active investigations.”
Local and national civil liberty advocates dismiss the concern and say residents have a right to know where they’re being tracked by government officials.
A fight for public records
KyCIR sent requests for records that detail camera locations to more than a dozen police agencies in Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee and Georgia.
Police in Kentucky cities Jeffersontown, Paducah, Georgetown and Owensboro, as well as Evansville, Indiana, and Knoxville, Tennessee, provided KyCIR with records that show locations.
The agencies that refused to provide camera location details include LMPD, along with police in the Kentucky cities of Elizabethtown and Bowling Green, as well as Atlanta, Georgia. The University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky also initially refused to provide the requested records.
The agencies argued that providing the information would impede police investigations, create opportunities for terrorism, or endanger law enforcement.
KyCIR appealed the Kentucky agencies’ denials to the state attorney general. The day after attorney general staff notified UK of the appeal in mid-December, university officials provided a map of license plate reader locations.
“After receiving your first request, our team initially decided to withhold the information in the interest of safety. However, after further internal discussion, we decided that releasing the flock camera location information would not pose a safety risk at this time and would support our goal of ensuring transparency,” said Dani Jaffe, UK’s spokesperson, via email.
“The safety of our community is and has always been our top priority. We maintain our commitment to remaining transparent, provided it does not put our community at risk,” she said.
U of L officials provided a spreadsheet and map detailing locations three days after they were notified of KyCIR’s appeal.
“Upon further review, records exist that are subject to disclosure without exemption,” said Sherri Pawson, associate director of compliance for the Office of University Counsel, via email.
The attorney general dismissed the appeals against UK and U of L. The others are still active.
