“The police are very active in investigating these cases,” said Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro. “Now they do arrests on Friday and Saturday nights.”

The issue came up during a recent mayoral debate. Mayor Peter Carlisle insisted that the city was “vigorously” prosecuting men who solicit sex from prostitutes.

Civil Beat has been tracking how Honolulu police handle prostitution offenses because concern about sex trafficking in Hawaii has run high in recent years.

Earlier this year, our Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps series investigating the ‘s handling of Hawaii prostitution laws showed that enforcement of prostitution had been falling off in recent years. Police made fewer than half as many arrests in 2011 as they did five years ago. The series also revealed that there was virtually no enforcement on weekends; fewer than 1 percent of arrests in 2011 were made on weekends.

But HPD’s arrest log for June indicates an uptick in prostitution-related arrests, at least for that month. The log shows that 30 people were arrested for prostitution-related crimes in June, more than any single month in 2011. None of the June arrests were recorded on a Saturday, but three arrests took place between 12 a.m. and 12:30 a.m. on Sundays. Last year, cops made no prostitution arrests on Saturdays and just two arrests on a Sunday, and both of those were on the same day at 10:40 p.m.

Police also made 12 arrests on Fridays in June. That’s nearly half as many Friday arrests in just the one month as were made during all of 2011.

“It’s my understanding their schedule has been altered so they do work Saturdays,” said Deputy Prosecutor Kyle Dowd, who handles all prostitution cases for the city.

But the Honolulu Police Department says that there has been no change in policy.

“Our experience is that prostitution occurs on every day of the week and is not necessarily concentrated on the weekends,” HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu said in an email.

Sex trafficking victims advocates say they haven’t noticed a major change in enforcement efforts.

“We don’t see any difference,” said Kathy Xian, executive director of the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery. “But we’re very hopeful that the prosecutor’s office will succeed eventually in ending the demand.”

Focusing on Demand

More men than women were arrested last month, possibly reflecting the prosecutor’s increased focus on johns. In June 2012, 18 men were arrested compared to 12 women. In June 2011, by comparison, 10 women were arrested and 9 men. Overall last year, there were 118 females arrested compared to 96 males.

Kaneshiro told Civil Beat that police and prosecutors are increasingly targeting the “demand side” of the equation — meaning johns, or people who solicit prostitutes — as well as the “supply side” and the overall business of prostitution.

From Jan. 1 to June 12, there were 70 cases involving johns, according to a disposition summary compiled by the prosecutor’s office.

There were no trials and none pleaded guilty. There are 42 cases that are still pending, three no contest pleas, three dismissals, and 22 — a plea available to first-time offenders allowing the charge to be expunged as long as defendants remain arrest-free and pay off fines and fees within a six-month period. All of the 22 deferred pleas were granted by a judge over the prosecutor’s objections.

The prosecutor’s office started compiling the data this year, and two months ago Kaneshiro assigned Dowd to handle all prostitution-related cases.

Kaneshiro said the data tells him the court treats most john cases like other first-offense crimes, giving them a second chance through a deferred plea.

“We knew that would happen,” he said. “But now what it does is put that guy into the category of the next offense, if there’s a conviction, the third one will be a habitual. And the deferred pleas will count as a prior.”

Indeed, deferred pleas appear to be just as common today as they were two years ago when Civil Beat first looked at prostitution sentencing. Two other things that haven’t changed are most johns are local men, and enforcement is limited to downtown and Waikiki.

New Laws Not Used Much Yet

The Legislature in 2011 gave Kaneshiro three new tools to fight prostitution, but he said they haven’t gotten much use yet. One of those was making prostitution a felony for habitual johns.

Kaneshiro said he expects the new habitual johns law will be utilized more in the future because it requires proving someone solicited sex at least twice within 10 years.

The other two new tools are stiffer penalties for promoting prostitution — a law targeting pimps — and an improved witness protection program that can cover prostitutes who are identified as victims and are willing to testify against their pimps.

The word is out about the witness protection, Kaneshiro said, but only a couple have taken advantage of it.

“We can’t force people to talk,” he said.

Many prostitutes lack permanent addresses, so if they’re arrested or implicated in a case, they just disappear, Kaneshiro said.

“The main thing we don’t have that would make a difference is the prostitutes coming forward as victims and cooperating with us. If we have that, then we have other tools,” Kaneshiro said. “For example, if we’re told by the prostitute, ‘Oh yeah, this is a business. I’m working for him. I was coerced. I’m underage.’ Then we can do our investigation, go after bank records and do a racketeering case and shut down the business enterprise. But we need to have that witness, that victim, come forward.”

These bigger cases take time to put together, he said, but have greater impact on overall crime.

Xian, the victims advocate, said prosecutors won’t land a big sex trafficking case by just arresting prostitutes and hoping one of them turns witness.

“They will never get a sex trafficking victim if they arrest the girl. It’s just too intimidating,” she said. “The girls are incredibly reluctant to cooperate with them.”

Local law enforcement needs to change their approach, she said.

Dowd described the “peaks and valleys” that the arrest log shows. He noted a big influx last month in arrests of johns due to a police operation in Waikiki.

“It does take time to organize, especially if there’s going to be undercover women, pulling them from their different departments to set up operations,” Kaneshiro said. “If there’s a decline, it’s not because the police don’t want to do it. It’s because of operational, logistics, and you have to consider things like overtime costs.”

The prosecutor’s office has also taken note of a trend in more domestic violence cases related to prostitution.

“As we analyze the cases, we started seeing that some of these victims are not just housewives, they’re actually prostitutes who are living with their pimps,” Kaneshiro said. “We’re trying to look at the bigger picture and bring things together and put it in the proper perspective in how we prosecute these cases.”

It matters because of the penalties, he said. If a woman says she was coerced into prostitution, for instance, it could be a felony instead of misdemeanor.

“We’re focusing on addressing the overall crime problem … so it’s not just a revolving door,” he said.

Mayoral Candidates Weigh In

The focus on johns seems to mirror concerns expressed by Honolulu’s mayoral candidates. Ben Cayetano, Carlisle and Kirk Caldwell all addressed the issue of prostitution in a May 23 debate.

Cayetano said the city should deal with the problem by starting to arrest and prosecute johns.

Carlisle, a former prosecutor, said the city is already prosecuting johns vigorously.

Caldwell said it boils down to enforcement, installing more cameras and putting more “boots on the ground.”

“The people in Waikiki, in fact, have been asking for this to happen,” he said. “It has not happened yet. I think it’s something that’s way past due.”

—Sara Lin contributed to this report.

The post Honolulu Prosecutor: Prostitution Investigations ‘Very Active’ appeared first on ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ.

In fact, a Civil Beat analysis of every Honolulu prostitution arrest made in a recent 12-month period revealed not one sex trafficking victim. But that doesn’t mean Kaneshiro’s going to stop looking: He plans to step up monitoring prostitution cases for signs of human trafficking.

“I’m not going to totally ignore the fact that there may not be a problem because there’s no evidence,” he told Civil Beat in an interview about its series, Cops, prostitutes and pimps. “We’ll look at it. I’ll assign deputies just to handle prostitution cases … to see if there is a problem.”

To better understand the scope of sex trafficking in Honolulu, Civil Beat for one year looked at prostitution arrests through the daily arrest log. Among our findings:

• In one year, police made no prostitution arrests on a Saturday and just two on a Sunday
• Police arrested just one pimp but did not charge him
• Last year, the department made less than half as many arrests as it did five years ago

The mayor refused to comment on Civil Beat’s findings, telling us to take it up with the department. Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha refused two interview requests.

Victims advocates have complained loudly about HPD’s inaction on sex trafficking. They have sought state legislation to compel law enforcement to bring to light the problem, which they say is serious and widespread. But that opinion isn’t shared by federal law enforcement.

FBI spokesman Tom Simon told Civil Beat the high cost of travel to Hawaii makes interstate sex trafficking a rare problem.

“While we have seen isolated instances of pimps coming to town with teenage prostitutes over the years, we do not believe that the interstate transportation of coerced sex workers into Hawaii is currently an epidemic,” he said.

For his part, Kaneshiro reserved judgment on the scope of Honolulu’s trafficking problem, but reiterated that he has not seen the cases that would suggest it’s a huge problem here.

“I haven’t seen evidence of wide-scale human trafficking over here,” he said. “Now, that’s not to say there is no widespread human trafficking, what I’m saying is I haven’t seen evidence.

Kaneshiro added: “I think … the problem may be greater in other cities and on the mainland, especially places like Las Vegas. When we find evidence of that we’ll address it.”

And that’s where his deputies come in. They’ll watch the cases more closely and potentially drum up leads for trafficking.

He says his interest is in going after the heads of the organizations, not individual prostitutes or johns.

“My goal is to go after the people who profit from prostitution,” he said.

To that end, after Civil Beat started asking police questions about the lack of arrests of pimps, police sent Kaneshiro’s office the file on the only pimp arrested in 2011, a case he now says he’s going to review.

Read our complete series on sex trafficking:

• Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: Honolulu Police Owes Public Answers
• Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: Arrests Turn Up No Trafficking Victims
• Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: Honolulu Prostitution Arrests Declining
• Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: The Database
• Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: In One Year, One Pimp Arrested
• The Story Behind Our “Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps” Series
• Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: No Arrests on a Saturday in Honolulu

The post Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: Prosecutor To Step Up Hunt For Traffickers appeared first on ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ.

• No Arrests on a Saturday in Honolulu
• The Story Behind Our “Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps” Series
• In One Year, One Pimp Arrested
• Honolulu Prostitution Arrests Declining
• The Database

Honolulu is one of 39 cities around the country that has a to investigate human trafficking. But a Civil Beat analysis of every prostitution arrest made in the last year reveals not one sex trafficking victim.

In other words, either Honolulu doesn’t have a sex trafficking problem — or local law enforcement isn’t doing enough to investigate it.

A Civil Beat probe into how the Honolulu Police Department enforces prostitution laws shows the department made 214 arrests in a 12-month period. That included 118 women and 96 men.

Yet Honolulu City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro says as far as he knows, none of those arrested was later discovered to be a victim of human trafficking.

The police “have had several allegations of human trafficking that they investigated and none of them turned out to be credible,” Kaneshiro told Civil Beat. “The ones that were credible — who came forward and said they were trafficked — the police, when they investigated the case, they found that there’s no trafficking involved. That’s according to what the police are telling me.”

Civil Beat tracked prostitution arrests from Feb. 1, 2011 to Jan. 31, 2012 through the police department’s daily blotter, a public document that lists every adult arrest on Oahu. The goal was to determine the extent of sex trafficking on Oahu in light of concerns that have been raised about the issue by victims advocates.

The total absence of trafficking cases alarmed crime experts.

“If you have no evidence year after year of any of your prostitution arrests being tied to trafficking, you’re not looking hard enough,” said Norm Stamper, former Seattle police chief. Stamper is a proponent of legalization. He believes that a regulated sex industry would help law enforcement more effectively address sex trafficking.

Amy Farrell, associate director of Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice, said the federally-funded human trafficking task force in Hawaii “should raise awareness about victimization in prostitution and focus enforcement on the promoters and exploiters.” The institute on trafficking cases across the country.

The local task force, called the Hawaii Coalition Against Human Trafficking, has been around since January 2005. Its current federal grant, administered by the Hawaii Attorney General’s office, is $101,820 for a two-year period. The group includes law enforcement, victims service organizations and other agencies.

The task force’s mandate is to identify and rescue victims of trafficking and to “proactively investigate all forms of trafficking in the community and successfully prosecute known traffickers and organizations involved in the trafficking of humans,” according to Joshua Wisch, spokesman for the attorney general.

The grant also facilitates in-state and out-of-state training for law enforcement on how to recognize signs of trafficking and how to identify victims, he said.

The coalition meets five to six times a year. Wisch wrote in an email:

Four of those cases were initiated by HPD in 2011 and remain active cases, according to the AG’s office.

HPD did not respond to repeated requests for information about the four cases. But Wisch said of the 30 cases, 15 are still open. Six were confirmed to be human trafficking. The others were not confirmed cases.

It is difficult to gauge the true scope of the sex trafficking problem in Hawaii. There are no reliable statistics. Every few years law enforcement manages to build a strong case against a pimp that includes kidnapping as one of the offenses. Labor trafficking has been higher profile. This fall a trial in what’s being billed as the largest human trafficking case in U.S. history, allegedly involving more than 600 Thai workers, is scheduled for federal court in Honolulu.

Hawaii, until last year, was one of a handful of states without a human trafficking law. The Legislature in 2011 passed a bill targeting labor trafficking, but not sex trafficking. Honolulu Prosecutor Kaneshiro was among those who said the state didn’t need a human trafficking law, that existing laws were sufficient.

To address sex trafficking, lawmakers lengthened sentences for pimps and made prostitutes eligible for witness protection, hoping that would aid law enforcement’s efforts to catch traffickers. But Honolulu police told Civil Beat they have not used the new law.

Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha refused a request for an interview. His department took questions exclusively via email.

In June 2010, more than six months after he became chief, Civil Beat ran into Kealoha at a mayoral press conference. At the time, he told Civil Beat: “I’m not even ready to give a statement about human trafficking, although we know it’s a problem.”

When asked then what tools his office needed to better handle the problem, he answered:

Last month, Honolulu police were asked how many prostitution arrests turned out to be trafficking victims. A department spokeswoman answered:

Mainland crime experts suggested that lack of trafficking victims could be a reflection of the Honolulu Police Department’s overall approach toward prostitution.

“I will confess that human trafficking as a law enforcement priority is a fairly new phenomenon,” said Stamper, the former Seattle police chief. “Rarely in the past did we think of prostitutes as victims.”

A traditional vice squad strategy of arresting prostitutes can help disrupt the market. But if a trafficking victim’s first encounter with police is being arrested, it’s unlikely she’ll suddenly turn witness for the state, said Farrell, with Northeastern University.

“Even if a woman has been a victim, she doesn’t trust them,” she said. “She’s worried about all kinds of retribution from her traffickers. There’s very little possibility in that situation that’s she’s going to provide information.”

Instead, detectives need to spend time building informants and infiltrating networks of those at-risk of being trafficked.

Honolulu police declined to discuss their investigative strategies except to say that they are “various.” But their approach may be hamstringing prosecutors.

Kaneshiro told Civil Beat that trafficking is a priority for his office, but he just hasn’t found any victims.

“That there’s not that many cases…that concerns me, especially if people are saying this is a big problem over here.”

“We are willing to go ahead and do the investigation and prosecution,” he said. “But we can’t investigate without a complainant.”

Kathy Xian, one of the main voices behind the local anti-human trafficking movement, says the lack of trafficking victims is a reflection on law enforcement’s approach to the problem — not the problem itself.

“The way this system treats the victims in prostitution arrests is not conducive to them admitting to law enforcement what is really going on — that they are being trafficked,” Xian said.

“The whole paradigm has to change,” she said. “If they want to take a bite out of sex trafficking, they cannot arrest the victims, it just does not work.”

Nationally, between January 2008 and June 2010, federally-funded task forces investigated 2,515 suspected incidents of human trafficking. About eight in 10 of the suspected incidents involved sex trafficking while one in 10 were labor trafficking incidents, according to the . The remaining cases were of an unknown trafficking type.

The task forces confirmed that 389 incidents were human trafficking and identified 460 sex trafficking victims.

The FBI does not get involved in sex trafficking cases unless they involve children or adults forced into prostitution against their will who have been brought to Hawaii from elsewhere, according to local FBI spokesman Tom Simon.

Still, sex trafficking across state lines is rare here, he said.

“Because Hawaii is the most remote place on planet Earth, traveling here to set up a prostitution ring with coerced sex workers from afar is an expensive prospect,” Simon said.

“While we have seen isolated instances of pimps coming to town with teenage prostitutes over the years, we do not believe that the interstate transportation of coerced sex workers into Hawaii is currently an epidemic,” he said. “The overhead costs for the pimps is simply too high to justify the mass trafficking of coerced prostitutes into Hawaii.”

He said: “Sadly, Hawaii’s prostitution problem appears to be largely homegrown.”

The post Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: Arrests Turn Up No Trafficking Victims appeared first on ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ.

• No Arrests on a Saturday in Honolulu
• The Story Behind Our “Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps” Series
• In One Year, One Pimp Arrested
• The Database
• Arrests Turn Up No Trafficking Victims

Five years ago, vice officers with the Honolulu Police Department arrested prostitutes and johns at a rate of more than one a day. In 2007, police made 477 prostitution arrests.

But that number has declined dramatically in the years since: Police made less than half as many arrests in 2011 as they did five years ago, a Civil Beat investigation found.

The data compiled by Civil Beat provides an overview of how police enforce prostitution laws and whether their efforts combat human trafficking. In 12 months, police made less than 1 percent of prostitution arrests on a weekend and arrested just one pimp, according to Civil Beat’s investigation.

Among our other key findings:

• Arrests were concentrated in two areas: Waikiki and downtown.
• Huge swaths of the island had no arrests. Windward Oahu, the Leeward Coast, the North Shore, and inland areas such as Pearl City and Wahiawa are either prostitution-free — or areas where prostitutes can work freely.
• The most common time of day for police to make arrests was between 9-10 p.m.
• Women made up a little more than half of all arrests.

Human trafficking became a hot button issue last year at the Hawaii Legislature as lawmakers passed the state’s first anti-human trafficking law. Hawaii was one of the last states in the country to do so.

Because prostitution is often directly linked to sex trafficking, for one year Civil Beat tracked prostitution arrests through the daily blotter, a public document that lists every adult arrest on Oahu.

Fewer and Fewer Prostitution Arrests

Honolulu police refused repeated requests for a sit-down interview, and took questions exclusively via email. Officials declined to explain why prostitution arrests have declined each year.

Honolulu prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro cautioned against reading too much into the numbers.

“Just because there’s a decline doesn’t mean there’s a lack of enforcement,” he said.

The department had no explanation for why its officers made no prostitution arrests on a Saturday and just two on a Sunday. It also did not answer questions about whether its officers work on weekends. The department explained the single pimp arrest by saying such cases are difficult to investigate.

“We do know that crime generally is going down,” said Amy Farrell, Associate Director for Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice, which on human trafficking cases for the federal government. “But the prostitution market is a very different phenomenon. We don’t always see those two going hand in hand.”

Source: [pdf]

No Arrests During APEC

Prostitution is covered under Hawaii Revised Statutes, Part 1 of .

Honolulu police arrest suspects using the statutes covering prostitution, promoting prostitution and street solicitation. But getting a full picture of how they enforce the law is difficult, in part because the law does not distinguish between a prostitute and a john. While police may distinguish between johns, prostitutes and pimps internally, they do not share that information publicly.

To get a full picture, Civil Beat began tracking prostitution arrests for a one-year period beginning Feb. 1, 2011.

In that time, police made 214 prostitution-related arrests. That’s an average of 18 arrests per month. Five years ago, the department averaged 40 arrests a month.

Police made the fewest arrests — just seven — in July.

Criminologists who study human trafficking say that catching pimps and traffickers, and identifying human trafficking victims in the process, requires police to adopt a different mindset.

In Honolulu, prostitution is handled by the Narcotics/Vice Division, which is staffed by 90 officers, according to the department. Their jurisdiction is all of Oahu. But prostitution arrests have been concentrated in two main areas: downtown Honolulu and Waikiki.

When asked where and how vice officers are assigned, a police spokeswoman wrote: “They work out of multiple locations, including Alapai (downtown) headquarters, and on various shifts.”

Civil Beat shared its findings with former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper.

His reaction to Honolulu’s staff of 90 officers in Narcotics/Vice?

“Big. It sounds very big to me,” Stamper said. “That’s certainly not an unreasonable number for the population they serve, if in fact they are addressing vice and narcotics issues outside the city of Honolulu.”

But given that almost all arrests are concentrated in just two areas, Stamper said he thought the number of arrests seemed low for that many vice officers.

“If their beat is the entire island that’s not an unusual number. But if they’re assigned to just those two geographical areas … that almost sounds like saturation.”

The police blotter, which lists the name of an arresting officer for each suspect, contained 25 different names of officers who made prostitution arrests.

But Civil Beat’s analysis shows that in one year, six officers logged 20 or more arrests. They made 70 percent of the department’s arrests.

Two officers made more than 30 arrests, while 11 officers made just one arrest, according to the blotter.

Prostitution Arrests by Location

Stamper said it’s not uncommon to see arrests clustered in some areas but completely absent from others. It’s called a “tolerance policy,” he said.

There were no arrests in Windward Oahu, the Leeward Coast, the North Shore, or Wahiawa.

“Based on what you’re telling me it sounds like the tolerance policy in those areas is greater. The tolerance is greater than it is in downtown areas or the other areas where these arrests are being made,” Stamper said.

View in a full screen map

Petty Misdemeanor

Soliciting a prostitute in Hawaii is a petty misdemeanor, with the same penalties as shoplifting, disorderly conduct and riding a bicycle on a sidewalk.

The maximum fine for someone convicted of a petty misdemeanor in Hawaii is $1,000, but there’s a legal exception made for johns, who face a lower mandatory fine of $500. Convicted first-offender johns also face up to 30 days in jail. But most first time offenders take what’s known as a Deferred Acceptance of Guilty Plea or Nolo Contendere Plea. In most cases, this means charges will be dismissed and removed from their record after six months so long as the defendant stays out of trouble.

The law does not discriminate between johns and prostitutes. The police arrest log lists only the charge administered, and does not indicate whether an arrestee was a prostitute or customer.

During the one-year period Civil Beat analyzed, the majority of those arrested — 173 out of 214 — were charged with . Police made 40 arrests for . One arrestee was a pimp.

Beginning in December 2010, police also began periodically charging women with both prostitution and other charges such as or running a .

Tracking what happens in each case isn’t easy. Case files and court minutes for petty misdemeanor cases are kept separately at District Court.

And even when charges are filed, cases are often continued for months before they go to trial. Some don’t even make it that far and are dismissed because the state asks for too many delays.

On February 15, a district judge was still hearing a case stemming from an arrest that occurred in June 2011. That day, two women arrested for prostitution — one in June, one in October — were scheduled for trial. But the state was not ready to proceed. They needed more time to subpoena a retired HPD officer to testify as a witness. Instead, the judge dismissed the charges against the women.

Kaneshiro says such dismissals are rare and that his office plans to refile the charges.

Female Arrests

More than half of all prostitution arrests involved women. This differs from national trends. According to a from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, national crime data from 13 states found slightly more arrests of males for prostitution than females.

Of the eight female teens arrested, four were 18 years old and four were 19 years old.

Male Arrests

Of the male teens arrested, two were 18 years old, one was 19.

To read the police blotter for the 12 months examined by Civil Beat, click here.

—Nanea Kalani and Robert Brown contributed to this report

Coming tomorrow: Did police identify human trafficking victims among the women arrested for prostitution?.

The post Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: Honolulu Prostitution Arrests Declining appeared first on ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ.

• No Arrests on a Saturday in Honolulu
• The Story Behind Our “Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps” Series
• Honolulu Prostitution Arrests Declining
• The Database
• Arrests Turn Up No Trafficking Victims

In one year, Honolulu police made more than 200 prostitution arrests. But only one of those arrests involved a pimp — and he was never charged.

That finding comes from Civil Beat’s investigation into how Honolulu police enforce Hawaii’s prostitution laws. To determine the scope of sex trafficking in Honolulu, Civil Beat tracked prostitution arrests for one year through the daily booking log, a public document that lists basic information about every arrest on Oahu.

The Honolulu Police Department confirmed that it had arrested just one pimp in 2011. The department said it also arrested just one pimp in 2010.

The scope of human trafficking in Hawaii isn’t precisely known. Yet it’s considered serious enough that Honolulu is one of 39 cities with a federally-funded government human trafficking task force. Federal prosecutors here have also filed criminal charges against alleged labor traffickers, including the Global Horizons case, billed as the largest human trafficking case in U.S. history, involving more than 600 Thai workers.

A former Seattle police chief says the single pimp arrest in a year indicates that prostitution isn’t a priority for the department — and by proxy, neither is human trafficking.

“I’m kind of amazed at that. A single pimp arrest in Hawaii? In Honolulu? And island wide, in one year?” said Norm Stamper. “I trust there’s an explanation for it, but I certainly couldn’t give it to you.”

“It’s safe to assume that if there’s only been one pimp arrest per year for the last two years, the department is not targeting pimps — which means they’re not targeting traffickers, because by definition that’s what most of them do,” he said.

Honolulu police refused repeated requests for a sit-down interview. They would only answer questions via email.

When we asked why it did not make more arrests of pimps, a spokeswoman answered: “HPD’s anti-prostitution operations are continuous and employ various strategies.”

She continued: “The laws addressing the promotion of prostitution are difficult to enforce because these cases generally require the cooperation and testimony of prostitutes, most of whom are unwilling and/or afraid to do so.”

Honolulu prosecutors agree with police: Turning prostitutes against their pimps isn’t easy.

City prosecutors point to the recent sentencing of convicted pimp Joseph Vaimili to 40 years in prison as a rare success.

Megan Kau, the former prosecutor who handled the case, recounted how difficult it was to get the victim, a former prostitute, to testify.

“She was scared,” Kau told Civil Beat. “She was at home with her parents on the mainland where it was safe. She didn’t want to come here (for trial) because he was here. It was really a struggle to get her here.”

To help address this problem, anti-human trafficking advocates last year drummed up enough support in the Legislature to pass a law that made prostitutes eligible for witness protection. But Honolulu police don’t appear to be making use of the law.

“The new law has not had an impact on investigations,” police said.

Last year, the Legislature also passed tougher sentences for pimping. It’s now a Class A felony with a mandatory 20-year sentence.

Lone Pimp

The lone pimp arrested in 2011 was Isaiah Black, 26, of Mililani. He was arrested for on May 24, in Red Hill, a residential neighborhood adjacent to Tripler Medical Center. It was a Tuesday, minutes before midnight.

But the case never made it to court. He was released before charges were filed, pending further investigation. When Civil Beat asked the prosecutor’s office about the case, officials followed up with police.

“We had called the police department to inquire about the case, find out where it is. It’s currently being investigated,” said Honolulu City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro. “My understanding is that they have to interview several witnesses. It’s something that’s viable, but I can’t really comment publicly on it. But it is being investigated.”

He noted that prosecutors have a two-year statute of limitations to file charges.

The lone pimp arrested in 2010 was 26-year-old Mukadin Daquan Gordon. He pleaded guilty to several counts of sexual assault, kidnapping and promoting prostitution and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in September 2011, according to the prosecutor’s office.

Besides Black, the remaining arrests in the 12 months examined by Civil Beat were of johns and prostitutes.

A national expert said that’s typical of how most vice departments work.

“This looks like kind of the classic low hanging fruit. It’s easy to make arrests of individuals who are either posting ads or walking on the streets,” said Amy Farrell, Associate Director for Northeastern University’s Institute on Race and Justice. The institute gathers national data and information for a federally funded .

To catch pimps or traffickers, police need to adopt a different investigative approach, she said. Police need to be building relationships with informants and infiltrating networks where people are vulnerable to pimps and traffickers. It takes more effort than pretending to be buying sex and then arresting the prostitute.

“It requires a different strategy than what we think of as traditional vice strategy, which is to let prostitutes continue but kind of control where it happens and try to disrupt markets,” Farrell said. “But that does not fundamentally change conditions in a community that put people at risk of victimization.”

To do that, she said, “You have to be willing to arrest pimps.”

—Nanea Kalani and Robert Brown contributed to this report

Coming tomorrow: An overview of Civil Beat’s year-long investigation into how Honolulu police enforce prostitution laws.

The post Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: In One Year, One Pimp Arrested appeared first on ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ.

• The Story Behind Our “Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps” Series
• In One Year, One Pimp Arrested
• Honolulu Prostitution Arrests Declining
• The Database
• Arrests Turn Up No Trafficking Victims

Want to hire a prostitute in Honolulu and get away with it? Do it on a Saturday.

A Civil Beat investigation of 12 months’ worth of prostitution arrests shows that there is virtually no enforcement of prostitution laws on weekends.

In one year’s time, Honolulu police made no prostitution arrests on Saturdays and just two arrests on a Sunday, and both of those were on the same day at the same location. That’s no prostitutes, johns or pimps arrested on the busiest night of the week. Police made a total of 214 arrests in a 12-month period, with weekends making up less than 1 percent of those arrests. Instead, the majority of all prostitution arrests took place on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Honolulu police refused repeated requests for an interview and would only answer questions via email. The department declined to say whether its 90 officers in narcotics and vice work on weekends.

The department also could not explain why there were no arrests on a Saturday and just two on a Sunday.

“We do not track the arrests by day of the week,” a police spokeswoman wrote.

Honolulu prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro was surprised to hear that just two arrests occurred on a weekend.

“You would think they would have more than that. I can’t explain it. You have to talk to the police about it,” he said.

The lack of weekend arrests shocked mainland crime experts.

“No arrests on a weekend? In some ways, it’s almost humorous because that is the time when the commercial sex market is the most active,” said Amy Farrell, Associate Director of Northeastern University’s , which on human trafficking cases . “You don’t not make an arrest on a Saturday or Sunday if you’re targeting the commercial sex market.”

To find out how the Honolulu Police Department enforces prostitution laws, Civil Beat for one year tracked prostitution arrests through the daily police blotter, a public document that lists the names, addresses, etc., of every suspect arrested on Oahu.

For Norm Stamper, a former Seattle police chief, the concentration of arrests on weekdays in Honolulu raised questions about how the vice squad is staffed. In Seattle, it was common for his vice officers to work weekends and overnight shifts.

“The weekend arrest numbers raise a question of staffing, that also raises a question in my mind of labor unions,” he said, noting that labor contracts can affect when officers work.

Stamper said his vice officers in Seattle sometimes put their weekend stings on hold to help work major events or breaking investigations. But that still wouldn’t explain Honolulu’s absence of prostitution arrests on weekends for an entire year, he said.

Wednesdays Most Popular

Civil Beat tracked prostitution arrests for the one-year period beginning Feb. 1, 2011. The most popular day for police to make arrests was Wednesday. Out of 214 total arrests, police made 63 arrests, or roughly 30 percent, on Wednesdays.

The most common time for police to make their prostitution busts was between 9-10 p.m. During that hour, Honolulu police made one-third of all arrests. Just under half of the arrests took place between 10 p.m. and midnight, with about 15 percent of arrests occurring after midnight.

There were also a handful of arrests at unusual hours. One woman was arrested at 10:50 a.m. Five other arrests happened around lunchtime.

Sunday Arrests

There were two exceptions to the rule when it came to weekend arrests.

On Sunday, Oct. 2, 2011, Jong Im Hong, 33, and Chong Rueter, 56, were arrested for prostitution.

Both women were arrested at 10:40 p.m. at Rappongi Spa, a massage parlor that regularly on backpage.com, an adult services website. The massage parlor is located at 350 Ward Avenue, a two-story business complex notorious for prostitution activity and .

Hong was charged with prostitution. Rueter was charged with prostitution, massaging without a license and operating a beauty shop without a license.

Both pleaded not guilty and are represented by William Harrison, a private attorney. On Feb. 15, both women appeared in court. Hong wore a faded blue T-shirt and capri jeans. Her deadpan expression never changed. Rueter wore a gray dress and appeared terrified. Rueter’s case has been continued to March 27.

In Hong’s case, the state was not ready to proceed — the HPD officers the prosecution needed were “in training” and not available to testify in court. As a result, the judge dismissed the case without prejudice.

—Nanea Kalani and Robert Brown contributed to this report

Coming tomorrow: Civil Beat counts the number of pimps caught in Honolulu police sweeps last year.

The post Cops, Prostitutes and Pimps: No Arrests on a Saturday in Honolulu appeared first on ÌìÃÀÊÓƵ.