HONOLULU (Legal Newsline) – A Hawai’i police chief can use officers from a different county to quell protests, a state appeals court has ruled in a lawsuit concerning a proposed telescope on the volcano Mauna Kea.
The Intermediate Court of Appeals disagreed on Jan. 27 with native Hawai’ian E. Kalani Flores, who said Honolulu County Chief of Police Paul Ferreira violated the law in 2019 when he used officers from Maui County to help stop a protest.
Hawaiians had assembled at Pu’u Huluhulu, near the road leading to Mauna Kea’s summit, to block access to construction equipment and vehicles. Ferreira’s department needed backup, so he called his colleague in Maui County.
Construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope has halted because of COVID-19, but that doesn’t moot the issue brought up by Flores, Judge Keith Hiraoka wrote.
He also wrote that state law authorizes temporary assignment of police officers from one county to another.
“The presence of HPD and MPD police officers on Hawai’I Island to support HCPD's TMT-related operations, at the request and under the supervision of the Chief of the HCPD, was a valid exercise of police power under the Hawai’i County Charter, HRS Chapter 52, and HRS § 78-27,” Hiraoka wrote.