The Associated Press
HONOLULU (AP) -- A Honolulu policeman killed earlier this year expected to make a routine arrest, wearing no bulletproof vest and assuming the suspect he intended to nab was not armed, his supervisor said during the trial of the officer’s accused murderer.
Officer Glen Gaspar, 40, was fatally shot at a Baskin-Robbins in Kapolei on March 4 when he attempted to capture Shane Mark, 28, who was sought on an attempted murder warrant.
Lt. William Kato, the head of the plainclothes detail whose six members, including Gaspar, went to arrest Mark, told a jury Friday that the suspect’s ex-girlfriend, Melissa Sennett, advised authorities she was meeting Mark, and assured police he would not be armed.
“I asked her if she felt Shane would come armed and she said, ‘No, he would never do that around our daughter,”’ Kato said.
Kato’s testimony answered a question the Honolulu Police Department has skirted since the shooting nine months ago: Was Gaspar wearing his bulletproof vest?
After the shooting, Chief Lee Donohue refused to answer that question, only reiterating departmental policy that “clearly states that officers assigned to enforcement or field patrol duties shall wear body armor while engaged in those duties.”
Kato said the vests were avoided by the plainclothes officers because they “are quite thick, and if you wear them with aloha shirts, it would be quite obvious to anyone out there that you are wearing something under your aloha shirt.”
Mark’s public defender, Debra Loya, said her client shot Gaspar because he believed he was someone after him in connection with a previous shooting, not a police officer.
Gaspar, a highly decorated officer and 12-year veteran of the force, was the 37th Honolulu officer to be killed in the line of duty.
Mark has a long criminal history, including dozens of arrests. At the time of Gaspar’s shooting, Mark was wanted for allegedly shooting at two men, hitting one in the leg on Feb. 1.