State briefs for June 5
Ex-police officer accused of child sex crimes
HONOLULU (AP) — A man has been arrested for sexually exploiting children while working as a Honolulu police officer, U.S. prosecutors alleged in an indictment.
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Mason Jordan, 31, used a hidden camera to record sexually explicit videos of a child and then impersonated that child on social media to recruit other children to work for him as underage prostitutes, according to the indictment.
Jordan was arrested in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Thursday on charges of sexual exploitation of a child, coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in prostitution, sex trafficking of a child and cyberstalking.
Prosecutors also accuse Jordan of cyberstalking a woman he met while he was a police officer.
He threatened to circulate nude photos taken of her as a child to her family, co-workers and friends if she didn’t send him new nude photographs, prosecutors said.
“Jordan has been a hands-on sexual offender of multiple children for over nearly half a decade,” prosecutors said in a motion Friday asking that he be detained without bail.
“His crimes were not opportunistic. Rather, they were part of a years-long premeditated scheme to gain access to, and the trust of, extremely vulnerable children so that he could assault them,” the motion said.
According to the Honolulu Police Department, Jordan was hired in November 2013, and resigned in March 2021.
Pandemic delays trial for men charged with hate crime
HONOLULU (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic is delaying a trial for two Hawaii men charged with a hate crime for allegedly beating a white man in 2014.
The trial for Kaulana Alo Kaonohi and Levi Aki, Jr. was scheduled for July. They have pleaded not guilty.
An indictment last year charged Kaonohi and Aki with a hate crime after they allegedly attacked a white man who was attempting to move into their Maui neighborhood. They face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Court documents said the men punched, kicked and used a shovel to beat a man who was knocked unconscious.
The defendants are accused of saying the man was in the “wrong place,” didn’t belong there and that “no white man is ever going to live in this house or neighborhood.”
