Good day all. Hawaii has been a constitution optional state for a while now. Recently, their state supreme court basically tore up the 2nd Amendment. Now another story has come out regarding police DUI roadblocks. It appears they don’t really care if you have been drinking or not.
First, partaking of adult beverages and then getting behind the wheel of a car is generally not a good idea. Partaking of a significantly large amount of adult beverages and then driving is downright stupid. To try and prevent people from getting tanked and driving intoxicated, they will put up roadblocks to see if people are impaired.
We can go back and forth on if this should be done or not, but that’s something for another day. What I am writing about is how Hawaiian Police roadblocks are basically arresting everyone even if they are stone cold sober. Here are the details from Newsmax:
The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that a Honolulu police arrest of a sober man at a sobriety checkpoint has led them to an investigation showing similar instances of police misconduct in the Aloha State to meet quotas, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
As much as I despise the ACLU, every once in a while, they actually do something that is correct. Going after law enforcement when they are arresting innocent people to make a quota is one of them. (Pity they also hold the 2nd amendment in low regard)
On Nov. 7, 2023, Ammon Fepuleai was arrested at a sobriety checkpoint after blowing 0.00 and passing a field sobriety test. After looking into Fepuleai’s case, the ACLU of Hawaii said it found 127 other cases of people from 2022-24 who also blew a 0.00. Roughly nine in ten were not charged with a crime or traffic violation.
“The bottom line is this totally undermines the public’s trust in law enforcement — not to mention that false arrests are unconstitutional,” the ACLU of Hawaii’s legal director, Wookie Kim, said.
Honestly, this is something the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division should gotten involved with as soon as this information was discovered. This isn’t a “One off, someone screwed up” sort of thing, it’s a definite pattern of abuse by a law enforcement agency. It’s also something that probably started way up in the chain of command.
The Honolulu Police Department said it’s taking the allegations “very seriously” and conducting a comprehensive review of DUI arrests dating back to 2021.
The department is also taking it upon itself to conduct an internal investigation into the arrests in regard to the lawsuit’s other two plaintiffs, Sarah Poppinga and Tanner Pangan.
“We are dedicated to upholding public trust and will take appropriate action should any misconduct be found,” the police department said in a statement.
With this large of a problem, any investigation needs to be handled by a neutral party, and n, I don’t consider the ACLU to be neutral. It may take state authorities or the DoJ coming in and determining the facts.
The lawsuit suggested that officers were encouraged to prioritize arrests over accuracy because higher arrest numbers secured funding for the department from federal highway safety grants.
That certainly points to this coming from the senior levels of the department and, potentially, also the political side, such as the mayor’s office and the city council. They are the ones who would sign off on applying for any grants.
It also suggested that some officers benefited from the arrests, such as being able to leave their shift early while still getting paid for a full day.
The culture at the department has fostered an “egregious and longstanding pattern of arresting people … without probable cause and/or without due process,” the lawsuit argued.
That is a department in need of a serious overhaul, starting at the top. I would also look at the Mayor and other political leaders as well. This is why I think the DoJ needs to get involved. I have the perfect person for the job.
Thatisall
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