In light of the latest cases of Honolulu Police Department officers killing unarmed people, contextualized against a backdrop of police leadership’s outright denial of racism in Hawaii, it’s time for Mayor Rick Blangiardi to request that the U.S. Department of Justice review and investigate HPD’s disproportionate use of physical and lethal force against certain groups in our island community.

According to HPD’s own use-of- force reports, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders and Black residents have disproportionately been on the receiving end of HPD’s use of force, year after year, with little or no explanation or investigation. The stark numbers from HPD’s most recent use of force report released last year highlight HPD’s pattern and practice; and are exacerbated by Chief Susan Ballard’s past insistence that HPD has neither a use-of -force problem nor a race problem.

Yet, HPD’s statistics on use of force, lack of transparency on pending reviews of shootings, and biased comments on pending matters say otherwise. The DOJ investigation should examine the cases of use of force and HPD’s management practices related to use of force, including its use-of-force policies, training curriculum on both force and race/ethnicity, supervisory procedures and discipline system.

The latest two HPD police shootings support the need for an independent federal review.

On April 5, HPD officers shot and killed an unarmed 16-year-old child, Iremamber Sykap, while he was in the driver’s seat of a car. The unnecessary killing of unarmed people in automobiles is consistently condemned by national policing experts, and yet has been a pattern and practice of HPD for years. In Sykap’s killing, HPD refuses to release the body-camera footage, citing juvenile privacy protections. Yet, it immediately released the child’s juvenile record, presumably as an attack on the teen’s character to devalue his life.

Just 10 later, on April 14, HPD killed an unarmed Black man, Lindani Myeni. In this case, it selectively released only some of the body-cam footage, and then held a news conference to show only this limited footage. In that news conference, Acting Deputy Chief Allan Nagata said the officers “were in the fight of their lives, let me be clear with you, As a result of this, they did very well. They were very brave, and they fought for their lives. I was very impressed with what they did. I would have done the same thing.”

So much for the HPD’s independent investigation.

What was the unarmed Myeni doing that justified the officer pulling his gun and pointing it at him? Was this a “Karen” call? I’m referring to the numerous mainland incidents of people making bogus 911 calls to the police against innocent Black people knowing that it is easy for cops to believe that Black men are violent criminals. Is it a crime for a neighbor to enter the presumptive lobby of an unlicensed AirBnb? No blue police lights were flashing, no announcement that they were police officers, shining a bright light into the man’s face, moving toward him, gun pointed at him and yelling for him to get face down on the ground.

Did Mr. Myeni believe others were attacking him from the house?

With so many unanswered questions to these cases and other similar cases over the last several years, HPD cannot be trusted to investigate HPD.

While we are looking for a new chief of police, Mayor Blangiardi should request the federal DOJ to investigate HPD’s use-of-force policies and practices.

Kenneth Lawson is co-director of the Hawai‘i Innocence Project at the William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawaii-Manoa.