Twenty-four year Honolulu police veteran Boyd Kamikawa avoided additional jail time after he pleaded no contest today to his third offense of driving without a valid driver’s license.

Honolulu District Judge Dean E. Ochiai fined Kamikawa $500 and ordered him to pay $47 in fees. Ochiai could have fined Kamikawa, 54, to up $1,000 and sentenced him to a year in jail. 

Kamikawa was driving his mother’s car March 20 when he hit another vehicle, said Kelsi Guerra, deputy city prosecutor. Kamikawa asked the other motorist, whom he knows through his work as a police officer, not to report the incident, Guerra said.

Kamikawa had previously pleaded no contest to twice operating a vehicle while his license was under revocation for drunken driving. The March incident was not counted as his third offense — which would have qualified him for higher penalties including a year in jail and permanent license revocation — because the period of revocation had  expired.

His lawyer Jonathan Burge said Kamikawa could have gotten back his license before the March incident but didn’t.

Another judge sentenced Kamikawa last week to 30 days in jail, $1,000 in fines and 300 hours of community service for hitting a 61-year-old pedestrian in downtown Honolulu last year while driving drunk and for driving twice after the state revoked his license. He is scheduled to begin serving his sentence next month.