Editor’s note: The Honolulu Police Department is finally releasing officer misconduct records that Civil Beat requested under Hawaii’s public records law. In some cases it has taken years for the disciplinary action to be finalized and months or even years longer for the department to process our public records requests. We think many of the stories contained in the files are still worth telling. The details provide more insight into the officer’s thinking and behavior as well as a look at how HPD handled the case. We also we think it’s important that public agencies know we will still publish the information even if it takes them years to release it. In this story, a Honolulu police officer resigned as disciplinary action and possible criminal prosecution were looming.
A Honolulu police officer left the force in March 2021 as he was being investigated for pressuring a minor into taking shots of alcohol, causing them to get sick and black out.
More than two years later, Officer Mason Jordan has been arrested on different charges related to the sexual exploitation of children and is currently being held in the federal detention center in Honolulu.
Here’s what happened, according to a disciplinary report on the police department’s initial investigation into Jordan. HPD officials blacked out much of this report, including pronouns relating to the victim.
In 2021, Honolulu police got a tip that Jordan had acted inappropriately toward a juvenile a year before while on a trip to Florida.
An officer interviewed the minor via telephone who recounted that on Feb. 19, 2020, Jordan decided rather than go out for the evening with his friends, he’d stay at home with the victim.
Jordan and the juvenile played video games and Jordan went into the kitchen and came back with nearly a full bottle of “Peanut Butter Skrewball” whiskey, glasses and ice. The victim said Jordan pressured them into taking shots over the course of the evening.
The juvenile told the HPD investigator that Jordan encouraged them to drink even though they didn’t feel like it, saying things like, “Come on, come on. Just take another one. It doesn’t seem like you drink.”
After a couple hours, the juvenile got really sick, threw up in the downstairs bathroom and blacked out. They didn’t remember what happened next, but told the investigator they woke up the next morning wearing only a T-shirt and underwear. Jordan then told the juvenile not to tell anyone about what had happened. He also said he had turned off the security cameras in the house.
The department initiated an internal investigation in February 2021. Jordan refused to participate or even speak to investigators.
He resigned from the police department on March 26, 2021. Investigators turned their findings over to the Honolulu Prosecutor’s Office, which declined to take the case.
Then, an entirely different case surfaced. In May 2022, Jordan was indicted by a Honolulu grand jury on eight counts, including sexual exploitation of a child, coercion, enticement of a minor to engage in prostitution, sex trafficking of a child and cyberstalking.
U.S. marshals and agents with the federal Homeland Security Investigations arrested him on June 2, 2022, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Press releases issued by New Mexico agents and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Hawaii outline the story, including details from the indictment.
It turns out that Jordan, while still an HPD officer, allegedly took sexually explicit photographs of a child in 2017, and used a hidden camera to record sexually explicit videos of that same child on two occasions in 2016.
According to the press release, Jordan is also alleged to have impersonated that child, using social media, to recruit other local children to work for him as underage prostitutes in 2020.
“Jordan allegedly met up with some of those children for commercial sex acts in 2020,” the press release says. “Jordan also allegedly ‘sextorted’ a woman he encountered in connection with his duties as a police officer, using underage photographs he obtained of that woman.”
He is awaiting trial, which is scheduled for March 25, according to court records.
Jordan faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and up to 30 years on three counts of sexual exploitation, a mandatory minimum of 10 years and up to life on two counts of coercion and enticement and two counts of sex trafficking, and up to five years in prison for cyberstalking, the federal press release says.
His Honolulu attorney, Caroline Elliot, told Civil Beat Jordan did not have a comment.
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