Trial delayed for Hawaii sober-driver arrest suit amid records fight
A state judge weighed whether drivers suing the city can obtain unredacted police reports and body camera footage from disputed DUI arrests.
by Jeremy Yurow, Court House News, October 21, 2026
HONOLULU — It’s been nearly three years since Honolulu police arrested a visiting educator from American Samoa who blew 0.00 on a breathalyzer, but his and other drivers’ lawsuit over the department’s drunken-driving arrests won’t reach a jury until the summer of 2028.
First Circuit Judge Karin Holma on Wednesday reset the trial in Ammon Fepuleai’s class action from May 2027 to July 31, 2028.
She also took under advisement the drivers’ bid to force the city to turn over unredacted police reports and body camera footage from dozens of DUI arrests, raising concerns about the privacy rights of the people arrested.
“Your employee may say, ‘I’m going to a doctor’s appointment,’ but that doesn’t mean I want to share with you the doctor’s notes and what the doctor said I had, right?” Holma said, calling the city’s analogy a good one.
The plaintiffs say Honolulu police arrested drivers without probable cause as officers sought to boost arrest numbers. The drivers narrowed their records request to 98 arrests flagged by police auditors or their own analysis as potentially problematic.
Emily Hills, representing the drivers, said the city’s own review found officers turning body cameras on and off at inappropriate times and not filing follow-up reports. The drivers need to contact the people arrested to fill in the gaps, she said.
“I think the first, most basic question is: Were you intoxicated that night?” Hills said.
Holma questioned how useful that would be.
“What percentage of those people do you think are going to tell you, ‘Yes, I was intoxicated’?” she asked.
She also questioned a statement in the drivers’ motion that a police investigation found 58% of the Night Enforcement Unit’s 2023 DUI arrests were questionable. Holma noted the figure appeared to apply to the 74 arrests that were audited, rather than all 769 arrests the unit made that year.
Hills acknowledged the judge’s point.
“I think the court is correct,” she said.
She later said she was unsure how the figure should be read. Deputy Corporation Counsel Brad Sova, representing the city, said he did not have the exact answer but did not believe the unit made only 74 arrests that year.
Sova said the city had turned over police reports in nearly all the 98 cases but body camera footage in only 15. It has redacted names and other identifying information, citing the arrestees’ constitutional right to privacy.
“This is hundreds of hours’ worth of footage,” Sova said. “Each video needs to be viewed, and then the redactions applied.”
The redacted records still let the drivers compare what officers wrote with what their cameras recorded, and that comparison is the core of their case, Sova said.
If the drivers can only prove who belongs in the class by interviewing each person arrested, he said, “there is not a class to begin with.”
Hills said the redactions make the footage nearly unusable, with blurred squares popping in and out over drivers’ faces and portions of the audio muted. The drivers would keep the records confidential under a protective order, she said, or notify those arrested and let them opt out.
Holma pointed to a Hawaii Supreme Court decision finding that disclosing private information violated privacy rights even with a protective order in place.
“I’m not going to rule,” she said. “I’m going to take it under advisement. But I will tell you those are some of the concerns.”
Fepuleai and two other drivers, Sarah Poppinga and Tanner Pangan, who are represented by the ACLU, sued in May 2025. They claim that Honolulu police arrested 129 people for DUI from 2022 through 2024 whose breath or blood tests showed no alcohol, and that only 15 received traffic tickets and three were charged with drug-related DUI offenses.
The drivers say the department used arrest numbers to justify federal funding for sobriety checkpoints and let officers go home early after one arrest. They seek an injunction and the expungement of their arrest records.