By Nick Grube
Nick Grube/Honolulu Civil Beat
A Honolulu police cruiser on
the corner of 10th and Waialae avenues.
Hawaii lawmakers want the
chance to research police misconduct without being told an officer’s
disciplinary file has already been destroyed.
On Tuesday, the House Judiciary
Committee passed a bill that seeks to increase transparency about bad behavior
inside Hawaii’s county police departments by forcing agencies to include more
information in annual misconduct reports to the Legislature.
But the committee also amended
the measure to force county departments to hold on to fired officers’
disciplinary files for at least 18 months after those annual reports are
submitted.
The original version of the
bill — introduced by Rep. Karl Rhaods, who chairs the Judiciary Committee —
only called on departments to keep a fired cop’s file for six months.
“We wanted to extend it to 18
months,” Rhoads said. “We were concerned that if it were only six months long
that when the reports come to us we would not be able to review anything.”
House Bill 1812 seeks to shed
more light on the misconduct that takes place inside Hawaii’s four county
police departments for forcing those agencies to disclose more information
about bad cops.
Each year county police chiefs
are required to submit a report the Legislature that provides a brief summary
of misconduct incidents and whether an officer was suspended or discharged.
No names are provided, and the
reader is often left guessing as to what actually transpired. There’s also no
way to tell if a disciplinary action has been overturned as a result of a union
grievance procedure.
But HB 1812 propose to increase
the amount of information given to lawmakers in the annual reports. Not only
would the bill require better descriptions of the misconduct, but it would also
note which incidents constituted criminal conduct and whether an officer was
prosecuted.
The bill would also require
county police departments to describe whether an officer has appealed a disciplinary
action and whether it was still proceeding through a union grievance process.
HB 1812 has a companion bill in
the Senate that also passed another legislative hurdle Tuesday. Senate Bill
2591 — introduced by Sen. WIll Espero — was approved by the Sen. Clayton Hee’s
Judiciary Committee after first passing out of the Senate Public Safety
Committee.
The State of Hawaii
Organization of Police Officers (SHOPO) is the only group to oppose the bills
so far.
In written testimony, SHOPO
President Tenari Ma’afala said that providing more details about misconduct
could lead to the identification of police officers.
He also said the bills
contradict Hawaii’s public records law, the Uniform Information Practices Act,
that states that only the details on discharged officers can be made public.
SHOPO did not oppose the
provisions that would force county police departments to identify which
incidents were committed by the same officer.
The union also did not oppose
saying in the reports whether an officer has fully exhausted the grievance
process.
Support for the bill comes from
the Society of Professional Journalists Hawaii Chapter and the Civil Beat Law
Center for the Public Interest.
In written testimony SPJ
President Stirling Morita blamed the Legislature for making police officers’
names secret.
He recounted the story of how
the Legislature in 1995 exempted suspended cops from having to reveal details
about their misconduct at the behest of SHOPO.
At that time, the union was on
the losing end of a legal battle with a group of University of Hawaii
journalism students who wanted police disciplinary records.
Morita noted that the
Legislature in 1995 required the annual misconduct reports to be submitted as a
way to measure whether the secrecy was warranted.
“But we wonder how the public
and the Legislature can gauge whether the law is having bad results because the
summaries of offenses are so bereft of details,” Morita said. “How can anyone
get a picture of offenses within a police department with such inadequate
descriptions as hindering a federal investigation?”
He added that giving the public
more detail about the various incidents of misconduct would identify individual
officers. Rather he said it would give the public a better handle on whether
the police department, its administration and the police commission were
providing adequate oversight.
“This bill does not violate any
privacy rights of the individual police officers,” Morita said. “Please pass
this bill.”
Both HB 1812 and SB 2591 were
drafted in response to Civil Beat’s series, In The Name of the Law, that
examined police misconduct and the secrecy surrounding it.
Should the bills become law, it
would help reverse what has been a decades long trend to cover up police
misconduct in the Hawaiian isles.
Civil Beat also recently won a
lawsuit that challenged the confidentiality surrounding suspended police
officers.
Should that ruling stand it
could mean that all suspended and discharged police officers’ disciplinary
files will be publicly available and the records haven't been destroyed.
