By Lynn Kawano, Hawaii News Now
Published: Nov. 7, 2025
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - A high-ranking Honolulu police officer warned the department that sober drivers were being arrested for DUI, but the practice continued despite the alert.
On Feb. 26, 2024, then-HPD Maj. Mike Lambert hand-delivered a memo to Assistant Chief Calvin Tong.
The document called for an investigation into cases where officers arrested drivers for operating a vehicle under the influence of intoxicants despite breath alcohol results of 0.00.
Lambert conducted an internal audit, checking all DUI arrests in the prior year where drivers were released and never charged. The audit identified 166 instances with 36 being strictly alcohol-related cases.
Of those alcohol-related cases, 11 involved officers who reported smelling alcohol coming from the vehicle rather than from the driver, making field sobriety tests unjustified, according to the memo.
The warning came two months after HNN Investigates exposed the issue with the arrest of Ammon Fepuleai and others who were jailed despite having no alcohol in their system.
“Somebody should get in trouble if they squashed it though, because that major made a major allegation. It should have been investigated,” said Jonathan Burge, an attorney and former HPD officer.
HPD provided a list of DUI arrests that took place after Lambert sent the memo. HNN Investigates found 82 more arrests where drivers were released, not charged (RNC) with breath results of 0.00.
Burge said there are instances when a driver is suspected of being under the influence of illegal drugs so alcohol wouldn’t register. However, it’s rare for those drivers to be RNC.
HNN Investigates asked HPD about the memo, a spokesperson said, “based upon our multiple attempts to locate it, HPD does not have this memo, nor record of it.” The person it was delivered to, Tong, has since retired.
“Well, it’s a high-ranking official within HPD that’s saying, ‘Hey, it looks like something’s wrong here. Let’s fix it,’” Burge said. “These are average people that this is happening to, and that’s more problematic because it’s people that aren’t generally arrested for something.”
The ACLU Hawaii filed a class action lawsuit against HPD and the officers involved in the arrests. The claims include false arrest and violation of due process.
“The letter is a significant piece of evidence. It’s going to put HPD in a bad light if they didn’t take corrective action or sufficient corrective action,” said Alexander Silvert, a retired federal public defender. “It’s certainly going to help ACLU prove that citizens’ rights were knowingly violated.”
The memo ends with Lambert reiterating the need for a review to “ensure that policies and procedures were followed” to determine if “this is a training issue or the if this is a result of poor intent by bad actors within the department.”