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Kokua Line June Watanabe |
Abandoned vehicles
on HPD’s radarQuestion: When are unregistered automobiles allowed to stay parked on the street? On Ala Ilima Street there are 14 unregistered automobiles between Ala Nanu and Ala Nanalu. HPD often tickets cars parked illegally but ignores autos that have been in the same spot for months at a time. (People park illegally because so many cars never move.) Parking in Salt Lake is bad enough without this happening.
Answer: It's a matter of priorities, but the Honolulu Police Department says complaints about unregistered or "abandoned" vehicles (which often are not abandoned) aren't ignored.
When you see a violation, call 911, advised police officer Byron Anaya, of District 5 (Kalihi).
An officer might not be able to respond immediately. But "if you get a license number and call it in to 911, at some point, it may take time, depending on the caseload, but eventually someone will address it," Anaya said.
Also, by calling 911 a complaint is "documented," by being logged into the police computer, he said, and "we can tell if there's a history."
Salt Lake already is on the police radar for parking problems.
"We do, on occasion, providing we have enough manpower and enough time, have three or four officers do a sweep of different areas," Anaya said. That's been done several times in Salt Lake and around Honolulu Airport, known to be "big problem areas."
"On one sweep we issued 235 (parking) citations in about three days in the airport area," Anaya said. "We did close to 250 parking citations in the Salt Lake area" on another occasion.
Police will write a citation for an unregistered vehicle, he said. While nothing might happen immediately, there are consequences to ignoring a citation.
Under the Hawaii Revised Statutes, "We cannot renew or transfer the ownership of a vehicle if the motor vehicle records have been flagged by the courts for outstanding violations," said Dennis Kamimura, administrator for the city Motor Vehicles and Licensing Division.
The renewal form sent to the registered owner will have a statement from the Traffic Violations Bureau noting that a clearance from the bureau must be obtained before the registration can be renewed, he said.
Also, when someone submits documents to transfer a vehicle that has been flagged with outstanding violations, the computer will note the violations and require clearance from the Traffic Violations Bureau, Kamimura said.
Anaya explained that before police can issue a citation on abandoned vehicles, they have to mark the tires to make sure the vehicle hasn't moved for at least 24 hours. If so, officers issue a citation and submit a "worksheet."
Anaya collects the worksheets from all the patrol officers, then submits them to the city's abandoned vehicles section.
"Since the first of the year, I've submitted close to 300 worksheets in the Kalihi area, in general," he said last week. He submits an average of five dozen to six dozen a month, "easily."
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