Three Louisville Metro Police Department commanders are ensnared in an internal investigation into an officer’s use of the city’s license plate reader database, according to records obtained by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.
LMPD Chief Paul Humphrey initiated the Professional Standards Unit investigations into Lt. Col. Nicholas Owen, Major Stephen Lacefield, and Lt. Jeremy Ruoff last month after KyCIR revealed officer Wesley Troutman listed immigration enforcement-related keywords on 150 searches of the city’s license plate reader database.
Humphrey wants to know what the three commanders knew, said, or did in relation to Troutman’s searches. Troutman was already under investigation when Humphrey expanded the inquiry to include them.
LMPD manages a somewhat secret network of nearly 200 license plate readers, supplied by the company Flock Safety. The devices take photos of passing cars on public streets and catalog the information in a database shared with law enforcement across the U.S. In November, KyCIR published a report detailing how outside agencies can access the city’s license plate reader database for immigration enforcement.
KyCIR’s analysis of database searches found Troutman listed “ERO” – an acronym for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations – as the reason for 123 searches he ran in March 2025.
Troutman also ran 27 Flock searches listing “Immigration” as the reason, KyCIR found. All the searches were done not long before federal officials announced they’d arrested 81 immigrants in Kentucky as part of an operation “coordinated out of Louisville.”
A city ordinance restricts how LMPD is allowed to assist ICE.
Read the rest at LPM News.
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