Would you be shocked if only police had Tasers?

Did you know that Tasers are prohibited for civilian use in Hawaii, but legal for police use?

• Haw. Rev. Stat. § 134.1. Electric gun = any portable device electrically operated to project a missile or electromotive force

• Electric guns are not to be possessed, sold, given, or delivered except to law enforcement (§ 134.16)
  

• Unlawful possession of electric gun is a misdemeanor (§ 134.17) (Haw. Rev. Stat. § 134.1).

Asymmetrical bad apples and institutionalized abuse of power

When one speaks in the abstract about "institutionalized" abuse of power it is important to remember it is the combined individual actions (or lack thereof) of those individuals that comprise the actors within the institution itself that are responsible for the abuse.

In short, it is the sum total of individual collective actions that perpetuates institutional abuse of power.

By definition, if there were only "a few bad apples" it would not be institutionalized abuse of power. Moreover responsibility for such abuse of power is not uniformly distributed throughout the pool of institutional actors.

In a hierarchal organization bad actions (or non-action to correct the bad actions of subordinates) by those at the top have an asymmetrical influence on promoting the institutionalized abuse of power within the organization.

In other words, institutional abuse of power by a few bad apples at the top of the barrel is similar to a rotting fish. The ethics rot begins at the head and rots downward infecting the entire institution. Subordinates who tolerate bad apples at the top and/or the bad actions of their colleagues through non-intervention (i.e. not participating in the bad action themselves but ignoring and/or not reporting it) have begun the progressive process of ethics rot themselves.

When this putrification process has spread throughout the institution the abuse of power is said to have become institutionalized, and any self-corrective action from within is impossible. At this point only the actions of people outside the institution itself can stop the decay, and frequently the only recourse is to disband the institution and replace it with another.

The Last Winter

I viewed "The Last Winter" a movie about a small band of oil workers in Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) trying to begin an ice road to bring in oil drilling equipment and ran into unseasonable weather. It was raining in February.

It was a bottom of the ninth, bases loaded and mother nature up at bat sort of movie, but what struck me was the premise that the permafrost was melting, oil was seeping into the melted muck and the more that happened the more it continued to happen. Evidently the fumes poisoned the air making the workers delusional (or was it nature fighting back?). In any case it occurred to me I had heard this premise almost 40 years ago when I lived in Alaska from Charlie Edwardson Jr. (Etok) in 1970!

Etok called it "a runaway blow-in" Etok an Inupiat Eskimo activist from Point Barrow was the prime mover behind the Alaska Land Claims Settlement Act.

Anyway the point is all this global warming stuff has been obvious to the astute observer since at least 1970. I don't want to spoil the plot but lets say "The Last Winter" could have been dedicated to those who left early, haven't arrived, and don't know they aren't going to.

Just who those people are I'll let you determine.

Student tasered for wearing a baseball cap

Energy conscious Kaua`i bank robber?

Taking the bus to rob a bank and then hitchhiking to the police station to turn yourself in indicates how high the cost of energy has become on Kauai, or perhaps the act of robbing a bank is a cry for help by a resource strapped citizen unable to afford the medical attention and housing in these tough economic times - Bank robbery suspect hitches to jailhouse

Emailers Take Warning

From personal experience, I know that Kauai Police Department officers send threatening email messages to citizens, and I know the practice is acceptable and will not be publicly reprimanded by Kauai Police Commission or by Kauai Board of Ethics.

However, I did not know until reading reporter Rachel Gehrlein’s story, Emissions protest dampened by weather (5/24/08 TGI p.1), that police officers were monitoring the email of citizens. But evidently they are because KPD Capt. Ale Quibilan said "the department decided to prepare for any event" based upon the belief that "approximately 100 people expected to show up at the protest circulating through e-mails."

Let’s be careful out there.

Prosecutor or persecutor?

In "'Pet prosecutor' sounds off" (TGI, letters, A4, 5-17-2008) Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho writes "I'm sure the rest of the community would take offense if I decided to unilaterally pick and chooses which laws I wanted to enforce or not." She is right. We do take offense even when the action is not unilateral, but done in concert with other council members as was done at the June 15, 2006 session of the Kauai County Council.

At that meeting Shaylene supported an investigation into what she described "as a conspiracy against the public being informed of the truth..." Shaylene said, "Having practiced criminal law almost solely for 15 years both as a public defender as well as a prosecutor, it is very disturbing because there are the kinds of cases that I exactly reviewed and took apart and to have this kind of misinformation published it's just horrific."

Shaylene and her county council co-conspirators then proceeded to take a sheet feed error and spin a conspiracy out of whole cloth claiming "someone" intended to alter a government document for purposes of deception. They called for an investigation and got one from the State Office of the Attorney General.

A former police chief and candidate for the Kauai County Council's house was raided by the State Attorney General.

Computers and electronics were seized as evidence.

An email threat was sent from a county official to a citizen for expressing the opinion it was a sheet feed error.

After a six month investigation, the State Attorney General declined to prosecute, returned the seized equipment, and dropped all charges.

After an enormous waste of time, taxpayer money, an email threat from a county official, and the tarnishing of a county council candidate's reputation during an election it turns out the altered document was indeed the result of a sheet feed error which was obvious to the non-conspiracy minded all along.

It is the job of the County Prosecutor to exercise prosecutorial discretion in picking and choosing which laws to enforce. Hopefully this discretion will be based upon the seriousness of the offense committed, and not upon a politically motivated, half-baked conspiracy theory.