Mayoral aspirant criticizes cameras
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By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer
Former Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro said yesterday that the Legislature should scrap the new traffic camera speeding citation program because it is legally flawed and fundamentally unfair.
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Kaneshiro, who is running for mayor, said the law requires the owner of an automobile to prove himself innocent if he was not driving the car when it was photographed by the camera.
Keith Kaneshiro said cameras do not give equal protection.
This is a denial of due process, the former prosecutor said.
Also, Kaneshiro said citizens are not protected equally under the law if some can be ticketed by camera without being identified, and others are ticketed by police officers who check their identification.
Marilyn Kali, spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation, said yesterday the law was modeled after others in effect in several states, all of which have withstood challenges on legal or constitutional grounds.
The present prosecutor, Peter Carlisle, has said the law was carefully drafted and will withstand legal challenges.
Steve Roberts, a San Francisco attorney who specializes in transportation issues, said last month that he knew of no case in the country where one of the programs had been totally invalidated by a court.
"The two main legal reasons people bring against these programs are a violation of privacy and a lack of due process," said Roberts, an adviser to the federal government's National Committee on Intelligent Transportation Systems, the large heading under which photo enforcement is included. "Both of those arguments are false."
Kaneshiro, asked about the survival of similar programs elsewhere, said he had not looked at other states but was restricting his concern to Hawai'i, where he said the state Constitution grants citizens of Hawai'i more rights than other states may recognize.
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He also criticized the Hawai'i program as "driven by profit" — referring to the fact that the contractor running the program for the state receives payment based on the number and seriousness of the citations it issues.
Marilyn Kali said the system will stand up to challenges.
Kaneshiro, who was prosecutor from 1988 to 1996, stressed that he is in favor of obedience of traffic laws for public safety, and said he had noticed that there had been a widespread reduction in speeding, accompanied by some dangerous impatience among other drivers.
If the Legislature wants to reduce speeding, he said, it should appropriate money to hire more police officers who can use their discretion to ticket drivers not for being a few miles over the speed limit, but for serious speeding offenses.
Kaneshiro said he would have no problem with the Hawai'i program if the cameras clearly identified the driver as well as the automobile.
Kali said the Hawai'i program does not seek to photograph the driver; only California, among other states with such programs, uses photos of the driver, she said.
The rationale of the Hawai'i program, and others around the country, is that the registered owner of the vehicle is responsible for its operation unless he can show that someone else was driving it.
"We believe the legislation that we have gives us the authority to operate the program as we have implemented it," Kali said. "All all other issues will be determined in the court.
"It has been upheld every time," in other jurisdictions, she said.
First court hearings on citations issued this month could come Feb. 19.
Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.
