Ex-Honolulu police officer gets 14 days in jail for sex assault of minor during traffic stop

Former Honolulu police officer Kramer Aoki was sentenced Tuesday to 14 days in jail for sexually assaulting a teenage girl he stopped for speeding while on duty in 2014.

Circuit Judge Kevin Souza sentenced the 41-year-old this morning in the fourth-degree sexual assault case, and granted him a deferral of a no-contest plea. If Aoki complies with the terms of the deferral, the conviction will be wiped off his record and he will stay off the sex offender registry.

Prosecutors had asked for a year in jail.

Aoki changed his plea to no contest on March 16, which was the day trial had been scheduled. His sentencing was rescheduled four times.

In 2014, Circuit Judge Glenn Kim dismissed a third-degree sexual assault case against Aoki for essentially the same crime.

Aoki, then 35 years old, was accused of placing his hand on the girl’s breast after he had pulled her over for speeding on Sept. 6, 2014. He let her go with a warning.

The six-year veteran of the Honolulu Police Department was indicted on the Class C felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The indictment said that as a law enforcement officer, Aoki knowingly subjected a person in custody to sexual contact.

His lawyer, Thomas Otake, told Kim, “A traffic stop is not custody.”

Deputy City Prosecutor Lynn Costales had argued that while she was not under arrest, the girl was not free to leave because Aoki had her driver’s license and vehicle registration when he touched her.

After Kim dismissed the case, prosecutors filed an appeal but later withdrew it.

They then refiled the case on June 29, 2015, as a fourth-degree sexual assault, a misdemeanor, omitting that Aoki was a police officer and that the girl was in police custody.

Aoki is also a former University of Hawaii baseball player.