Tired of waiting for rules on police chases, lawmakers step in
More than six years after it was created, the Hawaiʻi Law Enforcement Standards Board has yet to recommend rules for police chases of fleeing cars, so impatient lawmakers are taking on the matter themselves.
Several high-profile police pursuits in recent years have ended with injuries or even deaths of bystanders, costing taxpayers millions of dollars to settle lawsuits.
Absent a statewide policy template from the standards board, each Hawaiʻi police department has been left to create its own policy. So the Legislature is moving forward with House Bill 277 despite concerns from law enforcement. The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to make a decision about the bill on Friday.
The proposal has kicked off a turf war between the Legislature, which wants immediate action, and the board, which was created in 2018 to draft statewide policy recommendations, certify officers and set training standards.
Deputy Attorney General Adrian Dhakhwa, who became the chair earlier this month, acknowledged that the bill has forced the board to take a look at police chases, but said drafting such a policy fits squarely in the board’s job description. The board is also in a better position to get buy-in from police departments, he said.
“For the Legislature to usurp the role seems a bit unfair,” Dhakhwa said. “This is what the board is intended to do. So let us do the work.”
Police departments, who weren’t consulted on the bill and have said parts of it just aren’t workable, seem to side with Dhakhwa.
The State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers “vehemently opposes” the bill and calls it a “dangerous and misguided attempt to legislate vehicular pursuit policies in a way that severely undermines law enforcement’s ability to protect the people of Hawaii,” according to written testimony.
Policing Police Chases
In 2021, HPD officers broke up a party at Māʻili Beach Park and chased a Honda Civic as it sped away. The chase reached speeds of over 100 mph and officers rammed the Honda before it crashed over a concrete wall in Mākaha. Officers then allegedly fled the scene.
All six passengers were severely injured. A 14-year-old was paralyzed from the waist down. The driver was in a coma for months.
Honolulu spent more than $20 million to settle a series of lawsuits brought by the car’s occupants. Three of the four officers were later fired. All face criminal charges, but the cases are on hold pending an appeal.
A 2021 Civil Beat analysis found that nearly a third of police chases on Oʻahu resulted in collisions and nearly half caused injuries, according to a review of 140 HPD pursuit reports from 2017 to 2019.
The crash in Mākaha was on Rep. David Tarnas’ mind when he introduced HB 277.
“These are vehicular pursuits that actually put a lot of members of the public in danger,” Tarnas said. “Constituents and residents throughout the state have contacted me saying, ‘Is it worth it to put the public at risk if they’re chasing after somebody for an offense that is minor?’”
Tarnas introduced the bill last year, but it didn’t go anywhere. After trying without success to get a meeting with the Law Enforcement Standards Board before the legislative session, Tarnas brought the proposal back to lawmakers this year.
The law would require officers to consult with their supervisor before initiating a chase to explain the justification and discuss alternatives, create a procedure for terminating a chase and require police departments to report information about chases to the state.
Honolulu police Maj. James Slayter told Civil Beat that many elements of the bill are already in the department’s vehicular pursuit policy, which was updated last year. Other parts — including consulting with a supervisor before starting a pursuit — just aren’t practical.
“You’re making a decision based on what your observations are and the totality of the circumstances,” Slayter said. “At that point, you need to focus on safely operating your vehicle, keeping the suspect vehicle in view and continually assessing that risk.”
The original proposal also prohibited chases for low-level offenses, which is recommended by some national policy groups, including the Police Executive Research Forum. Michigan State Police restricted officers to pursuits only if there was probable cause that someone in the car had committed “a life-threatening or violent felony.” Washington state enacted a similar standard, only to roll it back after police said it made it difficult to go after people committing crimes.
Nearly a third of chases on Oʻahu in 2020 started with a traffic violation, according to the Civil Beat analysis. But the prohibition on chases for low-level offenses has been removed from the latest version of the Hawaiʻi bill due, in part, to pushback from police.
Slow Start For Police Standards Board
The Law Enforcement Standards Board got off to a sluggish start. When lawmakers created it in 2018, they didn’t appropriate money to get it off the ground.
Finding time to meet was difficult because of scheduling conflicts among board members, including leaders of state agencies such as the Attorney General’s Office, the Department of Law Enforcement and chiefs of county police departments. For the first few years, agencies weren’t authorized to send alternative designees, Dhakhwa said.
“That shouldn’t be an excuse, and we’re trying to make something out of nothing basically,” Dhakhwa said.
The board hired its first employee, an administrator to oversee operations, in 2024. Victor McCraw started in October. The board has until July 2026 to be fully operational, according to state statute.
The police pursuit bill is the first time the Law Enforcement Standards Board is tackling a major policy issue, and that work started only after HB 277 was filed.
Dhakhwa thinks that the board will be more successful than the Legislature in creating a policy on which police departments can agree.
“Is it easier to get the kids to eat their vegetables when they’re the ones picking the veggies?” he asked. “Or would you rather get into a tug-of-war and force-feed them?”
But the lack of progress has frustrated lawmakers such as Sen. Chris Lee, who led the House Judiciary Committee at the time the board was created. The slow process “puts the ball back in our court,” he said.
“At the end of the day, the public doesn’t care generally which agency or which chamber or which arm of government is trying to solve a problem, as long as the problem gets solved appropriately,” Lee said.
Still, the board can only make recommendations and can’t mandate that police agencies adopt its policy suggestions. That responsibility falls to the Legislature.
Next Year?
Amid the debate about the policy and politics over police chases, Tarnas said lawmakers may decide to table the bill until next year, allowing the Law Enforcement Standards Board to take a look at the issue.
The board’s work includes getting copies of vehicle pursuit policies from all the counties, and it’s waiting on additional data about the frequency of chases.
While Dhakhwa and McCraw couldn’t provide a definitive timeline for when they intend to have a policy recommendation, they’re aiming for the end of the year.
If that doesn’t happen, Tarnas said he’ll introduce another bill next year.
“I’m just going to be persistent, courteously persistent, to get this done, but I also want to make sure that it’s right,” he said. “This is not going away. We need to deal with it.”
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This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.