Kauai County Animal Farm?

It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and I was reading a public (and appropriate) apology from a citizen who had sent a threatening email to a developer, turned himself in, was arrested, released on bail and is currently facing charges of harassment. (Lessons of protest. A4, letters, Monday, January 21, 2008).

The sad conclusion I reached on a day celebrating Martin Luther King's struggle for social justice is we have a long way to go when you compare the treatment a citizen receives for sending a threatening email and the treatment a Kauai County Police Officer receives for the same offense committed against a citizen for speaking in public.

Just a week before I received this letter from the County of Kauai Board of Ethics:

January 14, 2008

Thank you for your letter of December 3,2007. The Board refuses to reconsider complaint 06-­004 and it further declines to cite specific pages, paragraphs and sentences of the County Council minutes of June 15,2006 in order to justify its decision to you.
This concludes the matter of your request for reconsideration.

Mark Hubbard
Board of Ethics Chair

What is complaint 06-004? It is complaint I filed in 2006 with the Ethics Board after receiving this threating unsolicited email from one R. Asher whom the Ethics Board assumed to be from Kauai Police Officer Lt. Roy Asher.

Original Message
Subject: Furthering the deception
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 00:26:22 -1000
From: R. Asher asher@hawaii.rr.com>
To:

Be very careful. For what you are conveying could be interpreted as furthering the fraud. One may pursue conspiracy charges. For what you have offered is not accurate and just perpetuates the deception.

You know that the "2" page version on the web-site reflects the second page to be of a different seized font then that of the first. This I suspect or suggest to you was done so that the third page signature could be fitted on the second page, less of course all verbiage contained on page three (of original letter).

Be careful my friend.

Do not risk your integrity and reputation promoting a fraud.

My complaint to the Ethics Board was that this email was a threat in which Asher suspected me of fraud and was considering pursuing conspiracy charges against me for public statements I had made in the media. I had stated in public my belief that the document was unintentionally altered as the result of a sheet mis-feed error.

After a six month investigation at the request of the County of Kauai Prosecutors Office the State Attorney General refused to prosecute former Kauai Police Chief Lum for intentionally altering a government document. The AG investigation revealed Lum had nothing to do with the alteration and my analysis was correct. The missing paragraph was a sheet feed error (an error not even made by Lum, but by a Honolulu paralegal).

My complaint to the Ethic Board was that if Police Lt. Roy Asher was the author of this email as the Ethics Board assumed, then Asher had violated Kauai County Charter, ARTICLE XX, CODE OF ETHICS, Section 20.02, B which states;

No officer or employee of the county shall:
B. Disclose information which, by law or practice, is not available to the public and which he acquires in the course of his official duties or use such information for his personal gain or for the benefit of anyone.

The Ethics Board concluded that Asher had not violated the County Charter because based upon the Ethics Board review of the June, 15 2006 County Council meeting minutes what Asher had disclosed in his email to me had already been made public.

After a line by line review of those County Council minutes upon which the Ethics Board based its conclusion of no wrongdoing, I asked the Ethics Board for reconsideration because nowhere could I find mention in those minutes that R. Asher or the Kauai Police Department publicly disclosed they thought I was furthering a fraud and may pursue conspiracy charges against me.

So after more than a year of "investigation" the Ethics Board refused to reconsider my complain and it further declines to cite specific pages, paragraphs and sentences of the County Council minutes in order to justify its decision to me.

The problem is the Ethics Board's conclusion is not supported by the County Council Minutes as they assert and those minutes are proof the Ethics Board erred in it's conclusion. Don't take my word for it read the Kauai County Council minutes for yourself. You will find that what the Ethics Board asserts was publicly disclosed and what they based their conclusion on cannot be found in the council minutes!

The County of Kauai Board of Ethics erroneous conclusion (and their stonewall refusal to reconsider) provides indisputable evidence that our county government believes it is acceptable behavior for a Kauai Police Officer to use email to disclose information acquired in the course of his official duties to threaten a citizen for speaking in public.

The Ethics Board decision stands as testament that the County of Kauai has a long way to go to achieve King's dream of equal treatment for all. The current belief of Kauai County government officers (both Ethics Board members and Kauai Police) is that some people are above the law and more equal that others.

On Kauai we are a long way from justice for all, and with such tacit endorsement of police threatening citizens the Kauai Board of Ethics is moving us all ever closer to an Orwellian Animal Farm.