A year after the formation of the Department of Law Enforcement, Director Jordan Lowe is ready to do more.
The Department of Law Enforcement is the product of a bill signed into law by Gov. David Ige in 2022 that re-designated the former Department of Public Safety as the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, moving the Department of Public Safety’s law enforcement functions to fall under the Department of Law Enforcement.
The re-designation, which was finalized Jan. 1, formally moved all of the law enforcement assets of the now-defunct Department of Public Safety to the Department of Law Enforcement. Prior to the re-designation, Lowe said that his department operated with Department of Public Safety resources on their initiatives.
While the Department of Law Enforcement oversees the same state jurisdiction that the former Law Enforcement Division under the Department of Public Safety did, Lowe said the creation of a completely new department is allowing it to “expand their areas of responsibility.”
“We’re trying to do more and provide more services not only to the public, but also to our partners — our local law enforcement partners like the neighbor island county police departments and the Honolulu Police Department, and we’ve been working with the federal government law enforcement agencies,” Lowe said in an interview with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “There was no road map to start up a new department.”
Lowe said a lot of the department’s priorities are based on his team’s training experience and revolve around the six pillars of modern policing, which include community policing and crime reduction, and officer wellness.
“It goes back to the department establishing trust and legitimacy, having policy and oversight, which really is accountability,” Lowe said. “We started with that focus from a year ago, and we’re just continuing it on.”
The department is actively recruiting for both administrative and law enforcement positions, and when fully staffed will employ approximately 536 people. Lowe said that when the department’s responsibilities fell under the Department of Public Safety, staffing shortages limited their abilities to implement various initiatives.
“As we start to fill our vacancies, then we will do more. The whole idea is to do more,” he said.
Some goals of the department include partnering with the Department of Education on initiatives dedicated to improving safety in schools, developing a Silver Alert system that would notify the public of missing seniors, and establishing cyber forensic and state forensic laboratories.
Most recently, the department has taken a leading role in the regulation of illegal fireworks since the establishment of the Illegal Fireworks Task Force in July. The task force, which was created following a bill signed into law by Gov. Josh Green in June, is coordinated by the Department of Law Enforcement and comprises state narcotics agents, deputy sheriffs, county police officers, the Department of the Attorney General and federal agencies, including Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The task force was successful in interdicting 147,610 pounds, which equates to 73.8 tons or 3,615 cases, of illegal fireworks since September, when Lowe said funding was released for use by the task force. The interdiction was done primarily through the seizure of shipping containers at Honolulu Harbor.
Lowe said the department observed a decrease in illegal fireworks in the days before and after New Year’s Eve, a decrease in availability of illegal fireworks on the black market and a price increase — according to one price list, one “really large cake” was going for up to $1,000.
“What I think happened this year is people who had the fireworks kept it all until New Year’s Eve, so that’s why (people) might not have noticed a difference on that night,” Lowe said. “The more we can interdict and the more we allow less to be introduced into our neighborhoods, the safer it is.”
After the interdictions, Lowe said the process of storing and disposing of the illegal fireworks was “always a huge problem in the prior years.”
According to Lowe, the department has a place where the material can be “safely stored” that complies with Honolulu Fire Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regulations. Additionally, the department provides training for their employees, as well as county and federal partners, on how to handle the hazardous products. Once the criminal cases involving the evidence are closed, the department will begin the disposal process.
Since the task force’s inception, there have been two arrests of people selling illegal fireworks. Investigations into the importation of the seized shipments are still ongoing.
Lowe said that with the task force’s current limitations on resources and time, it targeted illegal fireworks importers and distributors but that eventually, it will have to start looking at those who use illegal fireworks as well.
“Like any other crime where there’s contraband involved, you have importers, you have distributors and you have your end user. They are all violating the law,” he said. “With limited resources, we’re going to target the importers and distributors, which is what we’ve done this past three months. Eventually, we will have to start looking at the end users, because it is a violation of the law.”
Moving forward, Lowe said while the task force’s priorities of interdicting illegal fireworks will remain the same, its methods will “probably be different” as it tries to improve its process.
“There are multipurpose objectives or goals with what we were trying to do with the task force, and I think we did them,” Lowe said. “But can we do better? Absolutely, because we’re going to learn from it. Everything you do, you hope that the next time, it gets better.”
Lowe said the department’s next priority, along with continuing with its existing work, is reducing gun violence — something he said is also a priority for Green. As the state’s newest department grows and branches off completely on its own, its main goal remains the same: supplementing and helping others to keep the community safe.
“Nobody can do it by themselves. That’s one thing I learned early on when I first got here is everybody needs to work with each other. Everybody needs to help each other, and I think that’s the mantra that this department is going to take,” Lowe said. “We’re here to help everybody, and when you ultimately do that and they help you, your community wins, the neighborhood wins, and that’s the whole objective.”
