The Hawaii chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union wants the Honolulu Police Department to address concerns over recent reports of racial bias and disparities in COVID-19- related arrests and use of force.

An ACLU letter Sunday was addressed to HPD Chief Susan Ballard, HPD Senior Police Legal Advisor Lynne Uyema and Honolulu Police Commission Chairwoman Shannon Alivado.

Citing a Hawaii Public Radio investigation and other media reports, the ACLU said Blacks, Samoans and Micronesians are arrested at greater proportion than their representation in the general population.

HPR reported that 26% of arrests for those taken into custody facing a charge of violating the stay-at-home orders were Micronesians, even though they make up 1% of the state’s population. Black people make up only 2.2% of the state’s population but accounted for about 6% of the arrests, the investigation found. And Samoans are 3% of the general population and about 8% of those arrested.

The nationwide push for police reforms came after the killing of George Floyd, who died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in May. Hawaii saw massive protests across the islands, with approximately 10,000 participating in one march last month from Waikiki to the state Capitol.

Ballard has said the department doesn’t need the kind of reforms now underway on the mainland, despite a spike in fatal police shootings over a two-year period.

The letter from ACLU Legal Director Mateo Caballero said the organization understands that HPD is considering providing racial bias training to its officers, but asked whether the department could look into “ending the aggressive enforcement of low-level offenses, end racial and wealth-based profiling, ending use of raw numbers of stops, citations, summons, and arrests as a metric to measure productivity and effectiveness, and routinely collect and release accurate data for a range of police practices.”

“The purpose of the letter is to propose to Chief Ballard that there are things that she can do internally that would go a long way to address these issues,” Caballero told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

HPD Deputy Chief John McCarthy responded in a statement.

“The HPD has received a letter from the ACLU detailing its opinion of racial profiling based on recent news articles,” McCarthy said in a statement. “The HPD is always looking for ways to improve and appreciates the observation and recommendations made in the ACLU’s letter. The HPD is reviewing the letter and will consider the remarks made. The HPD does not engage in, nor does it tolerate, profiling of any kind.”

Ken Lawson, former civil rights and defense attorney, said that the reported racial bias, disparities and behavior of police in general weren’t shocking to him.

Lawson, author of civil rights lawsuits on police reform issues in Cincinnati, said when there was a stay-at-home order in the wake of riots, their arrests were disproportionately of Black people or people of color.

“You get white people who do the exact same thing, violating the order and not charged,” Lawson said in an interview. “That goes to show the racial biases of the police departments. It’s not that Black people, Native Hawaiians or Micronesians are committing more crimes than other people; it’s just the way they’re policed.

“When I practiced criminal law, 25% of my clients were white, and for the most part my white clients would engage in the same type of crime that my black or brown clients engage in,” Lawson continued. “And they have the same lawyers, the same judge and would receive different charges when they did the same thing.”