Drones To Patrol From Oʻahu Skies For Illegal Fireworks On July 4th Weekend
New legislation that grew out of the tragedy last New Year’s Eve in Salt Lake provides additional tools for law enforcement to police fireworks use.
Law enforcement agencies will step up efforts to gather evidence of fireworks violations on Oʻahu this weekend as a dry run for heightened surveillance, including on New Year’s Eve — a change made possible by a new law the governor signed Monday.
The law was part of a package that state law enforcement Director Mike Lambert said heightens fireworks penalties and increases enforcement tools that will allow agencies to more aggressively pursue fireworks cases.
“If you’re lighting it up, and we see more stuff in your car or garage, expect to get blasted with a felony,” Lambert said at a press conference related to the bill signing.
Gov. Josh Green signed into law three measures aimed at cracking down on fireworks in Hawaiʻi that not only allow law enforcement to use drone footage in their investigations but also allocate more resources to law enforcement agencies to investigate fireworks cases and increase penalties for violators.
The fireworks measures came in response to an explosion on New Year’s Eve that left six dead. Aerial fireworks have been illegal statewide since the 1990s. Consumer fireworks like fountains have been illegal on Oʻahu since 2011.
Lambert said the state has 10 drones that could be deployed to aid patrol officers. He declined to say where exactly they would be flying this weekend but said law enforcement would test their capabilities on Oʻahu first.
Neighbor islands could eventually see drones, too. Lambert said he plans to have a drone program in place for this New Year’s fireworks season.
Rep. Scot Matayoshi, a Kāneʻohe lawmaker who introduced the bill increasing fireworks penalties, said in a press release that privacy rights would still be protected despite the use of drones. The state Supreme Court has previously ruled that police cannot obtain aerial video evidence on private property so the drones would need to be flown over public property, including streets and parks.
Drones can give police a huge advantage in trying to catch people in the act of popping illegal aerial fireworks, Lambert said, since that often happens on cramped streets where people can see unmarked police cars approaching them.
Previously, the law required officers to catch people in the act of setting off fireworks and carried stringent definitions that required officers to prove the weight of explosives in aerial fireworks. Those definitions hampered efforts to prosecute violators.
The new laws retool those definitions to make cases easier to charge. Penalties have also been heightened.
Setting off an aerial within 500 feet of a dwelling could result in a $2,000 fine and up to a year in jail, for instance. Those with prior fireworks convictions could automatically face a class C felony.
Violations that lead to injuries could result in class B felonies for the perpetrators. And cases that lead to death would equal a class A felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, regardless of whether the person responsible knew or could have known that someone could be injured or killed.
Other New Anti-Fireworks Tools
Although lawmakers declined to fund a new explosives enforcement unit that Lambert had requested to help pursue those cases, he said Monday that the governor did allocate funding to his department for six full-time investigators.
Earlier on Monday, Green signed a separate measure that sets aside $2 million for a new explosives laboratory to conduct forensic analyses in fireworks cases. That bill also gives $500,000 to state law enforcement for fireworks sting operations.
The deadly explosion on New Year’s Eve spurred into action a Legislature that has for years failed to take meaningful action to reduce the amount of fireworks on the streets. Matayoshi said he got right to work after learning that one of the victims of the Aliamanu explosion on New Year’s was just 3 years old.
“It broke my heart,” said Matayoshi, who has a 3-year-old son.
Other Measures Did Not Survive
Not all of the proposals to investigate fireworks cases made it through this year, including one that would have created a shipping container inspection program. Lambert said that he plans to continue pushing for more funding for new technologies that would close off the ports to illegal fireworks importers.
Lambert and the governor also said that fireworks confiscated as part of law enforcement investigations or surrendered by citizens could be used for public fireworks shows in the future. That could be one alternative to shipping the fireworks to the mainland to be destroyed.
Companies have charged the state up to $1 million for each container of illegal fireworks shipped for disposal. Lambert says he hopes lawmakers will eventually pass that cost on to the importers.
Lambert said his goal is to eventually go after the distributors of illegal fireworks. He also bristled at the idea that people need to turn to selling black market fireworks as a way to make a living in Hawaiʻi.
“Don’t cry and moan,” Lambert said, because “you’re doing it at the expense of our communities.”
Civil Beat’s reporting on the Hawaiʻi State Legislature is supported in part by the Donald and Astrid Monson Education Fund.
