HALAWA HEIGHTS, Hawaii (KHON2) — Honolulu police say there have been hundreds of 911 calls over the past couple of months to report illegal fireworks, but no arrests.
Some residents said the nightly explosions are only getting worse.
Jim Cook has lived in Halawa Heights for decades and used to pop fireworks as a kid on New Year’s Eve.
“You can understand that. What I’m against is fireworks going off every night ever since Thanksgiving. 1030 at night on a weekday. I mean, everybody’s asleep,” he said, “Boom! My friend who’s a Vietnam vet, we were eating dinner one night. Concussion bomb went off. He dove under the table. It’s really hard on people.”
Jim’s pup is not a big fan of the nightly explosions either.
“She jumps up, she starts pacing back and forth, she quivers, she drools, and she can’t settle down after that,” Cook said. “I spend up to 2 hours petting her and trying to calm her down!”
Honolulu police said there have been 624 calls on Oahu to report illegal fireworks since Sunday, Nov. 3, but there have been no arrests made in all of 2024.
Pearl City’s major said officers can not take a suspect into custody without a witness.
“If they’re willing to meet with an officer, that will help us. If not, we’ll get the call in the office, we’ll check the area. Many times they’ll see the officer coming, officers are patrolling with a blue light on, and people will run,” said Maj. Randall Platt.
Video evidence can be shown to responding officers to aid in an arrest, but a Kaneohe lawmaker said prosecution can be tricky too.
“Department of Law Enforcement has told me that in order to prosecute someone successfully for an aerial, you need to actually find a piece of that aerial. And when you’re shooting the evidence, you know, a thousand feet in the air, it’s difficult to find a piece of that piece of that firework,” said Rep. Scot Matayoshi.
The Department of Law Enforcement Task Force made one significant seizure of illegal fireworks from an Oahu shipping container in 2024 — it was in February and DLE officials did not make themselves available for an interview on what they have been up to since then.
“We do stings for drugs, this is basically explosives, right? I mean,” said Rep. Matayoshi, “why aren’t we we doing stings for that too?”
“Make a law that you can enforce because the one on the books right now is totally impossible to enforce,” Cook said.
Illegal fireworks can be reported to the DLE through their anonymous tip line, website and app — or to police through 911.
Permitted fireworks — according to Hawaii law — are only supposed to be use between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m. on New Year’s.