Surveillance and privacy, news analysis
Tooele Detective Used License Plate Reader Database to Track Girlfriend's Estranged Husband
He tied the search to a closed case and pulled up 20 records of where the man's car had been. The state suspended his police certification for 18 months. According to KSL, nobody sent the case to a prosecutor, and the window to charge it is still open.
In November 2025, a detective with the Tooele County Sheriff's Office typed a license plate into his department's plate reader system. The car belonged to the estranged husband of a woman the detective was seeing. He tied the search to the number of a case that had already been closed, and he pulled up 20 records showing where the car had been.
Utah's Peace Officer Standards and Training Council suspended his certification for 18 months. The KSL reporter who broke the story said this week that the internal affairs findings cited the Utah law that makes this kind of search a crime, and that a Tooele County clerk said the case was never sent to the county attorney's office.
Under Utah law, knowingly using plate reader data outside four narrow purposes is a class B misdemeanor. Prosecutors usually have two years to file. That clock runs until about November 2027.