Big Isle questions
medical pot raids

Some Council members say
the police should focus
more on crystal meth

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By Rod Thompson
rthompson@starbulletin.com

HILO >> Angered by police raids on medical marijuana users, some Hawaii County Council members strongly urged acting Police Chief Lawrence Mahuna this week to refocus drug enforcement on crystal methamphetamine.

"What I see is a paramilitary force outside of civilian control," Councilman Curtis Tyler told Mahuna, who became acting chief after the retirement of Chief James Correa last week.

"Get real," Tyler demanded Tuesday during a Council committee meeting.

"People are dying (from methamphetamine)," he said.

Referring to a recent incident in which police operating from a helicopter destroyed three marijuana plants belonging to a medical marijuana user in Puna, Tyler said: "Let's try to protect our community instead of rappelling out of helicopters. This is outrageous what's going on in this community."

"I hope you will say no one will ever encroach on anyone's constitutional rights," Tyler said.

A subdued Mahuna, who is normally soft-spoken anyway, answered that police are "bound" to protect constitutional rights.

Regarding new police rules that recognize the rights of registered medical marijuana users, Mahuna said: "We will comply with these rules and regulations as best we can. Each one of our officers will enforce the law with the proper perspective."

Mahuna's comments followed testimony from Kona medical marijuana user Rhonda Robison, who played a videotape of her own arrest last month.

On the tape, a vice officer informs her the marijuana supplies of the three medical users at her house are not legal because they are not "definitively separated," a version of the law which state Public Safety head Ted Sakai later said was not accurate.

After seeing the tape, Mahuna said, "It was an eye-opener for me."

Allegations of misconduct by officers in the raid are being investigated, he said.

Robison said she lost her job in a law office because of the raid.

Cancer patient Kealoha Wells, who lives with Robison and her husband, said she lost five pounds after the raid. With her marijuana supply confiscated by police, she could not eat because as soon as she did, she vomited, she said.

Councilwoman Nancy Pisicchio said police should go after crystal methamphetamine, also known as ice, "the real problems that's killing people."

Councilwomen Julie Jacobson and Bobbie Jean Leithead-Todd both called for more money to fight ice.

Federal, state, and county officials will hold a "Methamphetamine Summit" on the island Aug. 27.

An invitation letter to the event says ice arrests increased 431 percent on the island from 1997 to 2000.

State Child Protective Services reports that it had to remove hundreds of children from their homes in recent years due to family problems with ice and other drugs, the letter says.

A religious marijuana advocate, the Rev. Dennis Shields, cited a 1994 federally funded report by Patricia Morgan which found that the ice problem in Honolulu began after 1987, partly because marijuana enforcement made that substance scarce and almost as expensive as ice.

Not all Council members joined Tyler's criticism of police. Councilman and former police Capt. Leningrad Elarionoff called Tyler "out of line."