Question: With so many fireworks bills, are there any to increase video enforcement? Already in Honolulu we have traffic cameras that mail tickets to red-light runners and soon they’ll mail them to speeders too, plus the city has anti-crime cameras on street poles all over Chinatown and they had that one at a scenic lookout in East Oahu. I am sick of people getting away with shooting off fireworks in the streets. If they put cameras at key spots it might help.

Answer: Yes, although not with automated enforcement like the traffic cameras. House Bill 550 (808ne.ws/4g76t6k Opens in a new tab) would allow law enforcement to establish probable cause for a fireworks-related arrest based on video recordings “made by a law enforcement agency using, controlling, or operating an unmanned aerial vehicle,” if the drone is recording directly above public property, including parks, streets, sidewalks or easements, and the act leading to the arrest also is committed on public property.

People using illegal aerial fireworks in Oahu neighborhoods sometimes launch them from the middle of a street or cul-de-sac.

HB 550 is among nearly three dozen bills pending in the state Legislature aimed at deterring illegal fireworks, a push that grew more urgent after the New Year’s explosion in Aliamanu that killed four people and wounded more than 20, including several still hospitalized in burn units in Hawaii and Arizona, as well as after the devastating Palis­ades fire in Los Angeles, which may be a fireworks blaze that roared back to life after smoldering underground for days (the cause remains under investigation).

HB 550 would amend Hawaii Revised Statutes Section 132D-20, which describes other evidence allowed to establish probable cause for an arrest, including witness statements and authenticated photographs and video recordings showing a crime being committed.

The bill also would appropriate $1 million a year the next two fiscal years for the Department of Law Enforcement to buy unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor the use of illegal fireworks.

Many readers have asked why police don’t routinely use drones to enforce fireworks violations, noting that it’s already illegal for everyday people to set off aerials and that violations in dense Oahu neighborhoods are obvious, especially on New Year’s Eve. Some suggest that police drones should photograph buildings where aerials are launched and fine the registered owners, the way tickets are mailed to registered owners of vehicles that run red lights at the 10 Oahu intersections monitored by traffic cameras. In the next few months, those traffic cameras will generate speeding tickets too, according to the state Department of Transportation.

We emailed a Honolulu Police Department spokesperson twice this month asking about the feasibility of the idea, but never heard back.

However, a deputy city prosecutor said at a City Council committee meeting last week that a 2017 Hawaii Supreme Court ruling curtails aerial surveillance of private property by police.

The U.S. Supreme Court, following the U.S. Constitution, has twice held that aerial surveillance of private homes and surrounding areas (known as “curtilage,” such as backyards) does not constitute a search where the area is not covered from aerial views. However, Hawaii’s Supreme Court, relying on privacy provisions in the state constitution, reached a different conclusion. It ruled in State v. Quiday (808ne.ws/40wZb5X Opens in a new tab) that a Waipahu man growing marijuana in his backyard had a reasonable expectation of privacy because the plants were concealed at ground level by high fences, walls and gates, and that police violated his reasonable expectation with helicopter flyovers that allowed them to see the uncovered plants from the air.

“… We hold that aerial surveillance of the curtilage of a private residence conducted for the purposes of detecting criminal activity thereupon qualifies as a ‘search’ in the constitutional sense. As such, the aerial surveillance conducted by the police in this case constituted unconstitutional, warrantless searches. Therefore, the evidence seized pursuant to the search warrant that was based upon the police officer’s observations during the flyovers was the fruit of the poisonous tree, and (the defendant’s) motion to suppress evidence should have been granted,” the court ruled.

In determining the defendant had a reasonable expectation of privacy, the court cited his placement of the plants out of sight at ground level as “indicative of his subjective intent to avoid the public gaze” into the curtilage of his home.

It seems different with users of illegal fireworks — the aerial pyrotechnics they ignite are intended for the public gaze, visible in the sky to anyone nearby.

HB 550, however, avoids this issue altogether by focusing on public property, not private.

As mentioned, the bill is one of many fireworks- related measures, which run the gamut from making it easier to penalize people shooting off fireworks; to increasing punishment for injurious offenses; to stepping up searches for illegal fireworks at airports and harbors; to instituting civil penalties and asset forfeiture. To read all the bills, go to capitol.hawaii.gov Opens in a new tab and do a keyword search for “fireworks.”

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Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 2-200, Honolulu, HI 96813; call 808-529-4773; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.