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Honolulu police have released body-worn camera footage of the DUI arrest of state Rep. Matthew LoPresti.
The Honolulu Police Department today provided media with body-worn camera footage of officers interacting with LoPresti, who was arrested on the evening of June 16 after officers found his vehicle stopped on the shoulder lane of Fort Weaver Road.
The footage, which came in three video files from three responding officers, was made public two weeks after HPD’s June 17 release of incident reports from responding officers.
Some portions of the footage are blurred or bleeped, and part of the interaction appears to have been omitted from the released footage altogether. HPD’s Sgt. Steven Chun, who had responded to the incident, said in his report that LoPresti’s vehicle had started moving twice — as if LoPresti had removed his foot from the brake pedal — during the interaction. That is not included in the footage released by police.
When asked about the redacted and omitted portions of the footage, HPD spokesperson Michelle Yu in an email said, “Items in which a person has a significant privacy interest have been redacted.”
HPD has not yet said which officers the released footage came from, but a 43-minute video, when compared to the incident reports released earlier by the police department, appears to be from Chun’s body-worn camera.
The footage, like Chun’s incident report, shows Chun repeatedly asking LoPresti if he wants to take a field sobriety test after smelling alcohol on LoPresti; LoPresti repeatedly says that he didn’t do anything wrong and that he doesn’t see the need for a sobriety test.
LoPresti can also be seen asking about the consequences of taking or refusing a field sobriety test. The footage shows he was upset that police refused to tell him those consequences after he was asked to step out of his vehicle and placed in handcuffs.
“You gave me no indication of the consequences, because I’d be glad to take the sobriety (test if I knew them),” LoPresti said.
The officer on the footage, in response, said, “If I tell you what the consequences are, if you take the test and fail, that’s considered coercion. That could be leading you to a decision that you did not want to make. ”
The officer in the footage and Chun in his report alleged that LoPresti was trying to “trick” him into improperly coercing LoPresti into a field sobriety test.
LoPresti, while in a police vehicle, can be heard accusing officers of lying about the consequences of the sobriety test.
As mentioned in written reports and released footage, LoPresti had stopped on the shoulder lane of the Fort Weaver Road after an argument, presumably with the unidentified woman in the passenger seat of his vehicle.
The woman, in the released footage, said it had been hours since they had consumed alcohol, but Chun mentioned that he believed both she and LoPresti were drunk.
LoPresti did not immediately respond for comment for this story.
Source: Star
