A Louisville Metro Police Department officer is under internal investigation after listing “ERO” — an acronym used by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit — as the reason for more than 100 searches of the agency’s license plate reader data.
The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting highlighted Officer Wesley Troutman’s searches earlier this month in a report that examined how law enforcement across the country are accessing LMPD’s data for immigration enforcement. Documents obtained by KyCIR show police agencies from more than a dozen states pinged LMPD’s database about 1,700 times between January and mid-July 2025, using immigration-related keywords. Troutman accounted for 150 of the searches.
The practice surprised some local leaders who said sharing data for immigration enforcement could run afoul of a city ordinance that limits how LMPD can assist with federal immigration efforts. Under the ordinance, police can’t question, arrest or detain someone for violating civil immigration laws or undertake “any law enforcement action…for the purpose of detecting the presence of undocumented persons.”…