Fighting
Spies, Terrorists, Drugs, Human Trafficking, Financial Fraud, Cyber-crime and Organized Crime in the Pacific.
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the intelligence community. Sometimes we speak different languages, and our information systems didn’t work together at all in 2001. We’ve overcome much of that now and many of our information systems do work together.”
It is often said that Hawaii’s location brings about unique challenges. That is especially true for law enforcement, where the culture, location and cost of living combine to make problems not seen in other areas. Thornton says one area where the Honolulu district, which includes Saipan, Guam and American Samoa, differs is in civil rights violations where the focus is mostly on human trafficking.
“There are immigrant populations that are exploited, and primarily it is populations from Asia,” says Thornton. “They are people working in the hostess bars or in the agricultural areas. Those are problems we find there that you would-n’t find in many other places across the United States.”
The weakened economy and Hawaii’s high cost of living have led to an increase in fraud cases centering on Ponzi schemes, and mortgage and investment fraud. Simon says the state’s trusting culture provides opportunities for intelligent criminals.
“Our financial crimes program is different because the people of Hawaii are generally very kind and trusting people, which often-times makes them prey to con men in ways you don’t see in more cynical East Coast Mainland cities.”
Thornton says the biggest share of man hours in the Honolulu office goes toward counterintelligence. Nationally, the biggest focus is counterterrorism.
“We have a large military presence here, and we work very closely with the military to protect our military information from agents of foreign intelligence services. Cyber crime is a huge, growing crime. We have significant cyber-intrusion cases - there are foreign intelligence services that are trying to hack into computers to gain our secrets, or others hacking trying to gain information for economic advantage.”
While economic crimes are on the rise, Thornton says the appearance of mafia-type criminal organizations have decreased in Hawaii over the last few decades.
“We’re not seeing that type of organized crime coming out of Japan like we did years ago or coming out of Hong Kong like we did back then. We do continue to look for what we call organized crimes, which are organized groups that are generally involved in importation and distribution of drugs into Hawaii, like methamphetamines.”
At 55, Thornton’s career is winding down. Mandatory retirement for agents is 57, and while she’s thought about the future, she says exact plans are yet to be made. Her husband, Vern, retired after 33 years of service, has, according to his wife, perfected retirement. Thornton says they plan to split their time between Hawaii and the Mainland, and that golf will play a big role and snow greatly avoided. But in the mean time, it’s bad guys beware.
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