A Louisville Metro Police Department officer is under internal investigation after entering “ERO” — an acronym used by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit — as the justification for more than 100 searches of the agency’s license plate reader database.
The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting revealed Officer Wesley Troutman’s search history earlier this month in a report examining how law enforcement agencies nationwide access LMPD’s data for immigration enforcement. Records obtained by KyCIR show police from more than a dozen states queried LMPD’s system about 1,700 times between January and mid-July 2025 using immigration-related keywords. Troutman alone accounted for 150 of those searches.
The practice drew concern because sharing data for immigration enforcement could violate a Louisville ordinance that limits LMPD’s involvement with federal immigration efforts. Under that law, police are prohibited from questioning, detaining or arresting someone solely for civil immigration violations or taking law enforcement action for the purpose of identifying undocumented residents…