HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The Department of Law Enforcement still does not have equipment that can automatically record and save dispatch calls or radio transmissions.
Their law enforcement officers are also not equipped with body cameras.
These issues are still being investigated, nearly five years after Deputy Sheriff Gregory Bergman shot Delmar Espejoa disabled, unarmed homeless man with an open container of alcohol on Capitol grounds in February 2019.
The state and Bergman attempted to use self-defense when Espejo’s family sued, but a judge rejected that defense because evidence that could prove or disprove it was destroyed.
“The body camera footage has disappeared. Video from the State Capitol is gone. Audio transmissions have disappeared. A reenactment video is missing,” said Terry Revere, one of the Espejo family’s attorneys.
“The state was completely out of control with how much evidence they lost and didn’t preserve,” Revere said.
The court sanctioned the state after agreeing with Espejo’s legal team that audio recordings relating to the shooting were missing.
The team from the state attorney general’s office said the equipment automatically records on itself and no one saved the recordings before this happened.
Other evidence, such as the internal affairs report on the shooting, was “permanently destroyed by the State of Hawaii,” according to the court filing.
Among the sanctions, the judge told the jury, before deliberating, that he could infer that the missing recordings would have supported the Espejo family’s claims and contradicted the defense.
The jury awarded Espejo’s family $2.27 million.
“The judge did the right thing,” said Myles Breiner, another attorney for Espejo’s relatives.
In an effort to better preserve evidence in the future, the Department of Law Enforcement said it has purchased new equipment.
The DLE called it a “phased upgrade that will streamline workflows, improve data retention, result in faster response times and enable greater accountability.”
The two consoles cost a total of $155,000 and would automatically record dispatch calls. However, these records can only be kept for 24 hours, meaning the agency will have to manually save the evidence in that short window.
DLE said it is working to expand that window before the devices come online, but it’s unclear when that will happen.
DLE said it “cannot be sure of a specific date” as it works with suppliers and other agencies.
Internal policies on evidence preservation are also being reviewed.
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