Michael Miske wants out of the Federal Detention Center.

The Hawaii businessman and alleged organized crime boss was indicted last month on a series of federal charges, including racketeering, kidnapping and murder.

He’s been behind bars ever since, and prosecutors with the U.S. Justice Department are hoping to keep it that way during a bail review hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

They consider Miske too dangerous to the community and a potential threat to witnesses. They also worry that Miske, who faces the death penalty and has millions of dollars in assets, could flee the state if given the chance.

Miske’s lawyers, Thomas Otake and Lynn Panagakos, have a different view.

Michael Miske faces a bail review hearing this week to determine if he will remain in custody until his trial starts or be released under supervision.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

In court papers filed last week, they argued that Miske is an upstanding citizen with deep roots in the community, and that he should be allowed out on bail, albeit on a 24-hour lockdown at home, with no access to social media or the internet and surveillance cameras installed on all the exits.

They also pointed out that Miske has yet to be convicted of the crimes alleged in the indictment and that only his recent actions should be taken into consideration.

“Mr. Miske has a criminal record, but his last conviction was long ago,” Pangaskos wrote. “Since then, Mr. Miske has been an exceedingly hard-working, and successful, businessman.”

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, they said, also makes it unsafe for Miske to stay at the Federal Detention Center. Miske suffers from high-blood pressure, which puts him at higher risk for the virus.

Virtual meetings with lawyers additionally aren’t sufficient for Miske to review evidence and prepare his defense, they say, especially given the complicated nature of his case, which involves 22 counts and at least 10 other co-defendants.

Leaving Miske locked up and forcing in-person meetings between him and his lawyers, they added, would only increase the possibility of future COVID-19 transmission within the walls of the detention center.

Michael Miske faces a series of federal charges, several of which are eligible for the death penalty.

Miske is the owner of Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control as well as several other businesses, including the Hawaii Partners, M Nightclub and Kamaaina Plumbing and Home Renovations.

While federal prosecutors have described Kamaaina Termite & Pest Control as the “headquarters for the planning of criminal activities, the laundering of illicit proceeds, and the fraudulent ‘employment’ of individuals whose ‘work’ consisted of engaging in acts of violence or fraud on behalf of the Miske Enterprise,” Miske’s attorneys described it more glowingly.

They said the company, launched in 2000, employs upward of 100 people and over the years “has developed very strong community ties as a service provider, employer, charitable donor, and taxpayer.”

According to the attorneys, the company has thousands of customers, including the University of Hawaii, Polynesian Cultural Center, U.S. Coast Guard and Bellows Air Force Base.

In 2010, the company donated its services to the City and County of Honolulu to fumigate the Neal S. Blaisdell Center, work that was valued at $125,000, and that then-Acting Mayor Kirk Caldwell described as a “generous gift.”

Disappearance Of Jonathan Fraser

One of the more serious allegations facing Miske in the federal indictment is that he orchestrated the kidnapping and murder of Jonathan Fraser, a 21-year-old who was best friends with Miske’s son, Caleb-Jordan Miske-Lee.

Federal prosecutors have argued that Fraser’s “meticulously planned and premeditated” killing demonstrates more than anything that Miske is a “clear and present danger to the community.”

The indictment says that Miske orchestrated Fraser’s killing in 2016 after Fraser and his son, Caleb-Jordan Miske-Lee, were involved in a car accident that eventually resulted in Miske-Lee’s death. Police and medical examiner records show Miske-Lee was driving the car at the time of the accident, but that Miske blamed Fraser even though he was in the passenger seat.

“Michael has a heart of gold and a passion for everything he does.” — Larry Kapu

Federal prosecutors said Miske had Fraser killed and bought a $425,000 Boston Whaler boat, dubbed the “Painkiller,” to dispose of his body. Miske and one of his half brothers, John Stancil, are also charged in the indictment with trying to murder another man who refused to kill Fraser.

Miske’s attorneys argued in their recently filed motion that the allegations in the indictment should not be taken as fact until proven in court, and similarly said the accusations cannot be used as “a predictor of a risk of future violence” when considering whether their client should be released on bail.

Federal prosecutors say Michael Miske ordered the murder of Jonathan Fraser, seen here, after a car accident claimed the life of Miske’s own son.

FBI

They instead provided letters from friends, community leaders and business associates, including a retired pastor from Kawaiahao Church, who described Miske as a kind-hearted father, dedicated businessman and lover of animals, who once donated 10,000 pounds of dog food to the Hawaiian Humane Society to help feed more than 150 puppies rescued from an illegal puppy mill in Waimanalo.

Among those vouching for Miske was Angela Varnadone, who used to work for him at the M Nightclub as a brand manager, and has known him since she was “23 years old, newly divorced, and all alone in Hawaii.”

She said Miske-Lee’s prolonged hospital stay and death devastated Miske. His granddaughter, Nila, who was born while Miske-Lee was hospitalized after the accident, gave Miske purpose.

“He is no longer living for himself, but for his baby granddaughter that was left behind,” Varnadone said. “It is his mission to be a strong father figure in her life and keep the memory of her own father alive. His bond with Nila is undeniable and truly heartwarming to witness. He is her rock, and she is his. To separate them would shatter her world.”

Other people who wrote letters on Miske’s behalf included Curt Kekuna, a retired senior pastor from the historic Kawaiahao Church in downtown Honolulu, and Makani Christensen, a Marine veteran and local tour company founder who ran for U.S. Senate against Brian Schatz in 2016.

He also received letters from a handful of employees and business partners, including Larry Kapu, Brian P.K. Marinas, Allen Lau, of Kamaaina Plumbing and Renovations, and Kurt Nosal, of Univar USA.

“Michael has a heart of gold and a passion for everything he does,” Kapu wrote. “I will always call him my friend but will forever treat him like family.”

He Knew It Was Coming

Miske’s attorneys pushed back on the assertion their client is a flight risk.

The federal government already seized his bank accounts, they said, as well as his vehicles, including the Boston Whaler. He also doesn’t have a current passport.

Miske’s attorneys said he has known for years he was the target of a federal investigation into Fraser’s disappearance, and that he could face the death penalty if convicted.

He hired Panagakos and Otake in 2017, right around the time the FBI executed a search warrant on the Painkiller boat.

In 2018, when the agency offered a $20,000 reward for more information regarding Fraser’s disappearance, Miske similarly did not run and hide. Rather, he started assembling the character reference letters that he could use to help him once he was arrested.

Miske also hired a former forensic auditor from the IRS who specializes in investigating criminal tax fraud and money laundering schemes to analyze his business books and help in his defense.

“The government contends that Mr. Miske’s sentencing exposure makes him a flight risk,” Panagaskos said. “This government contention ignores the fact that Mr. Miske has been aware of this sentencing exposure since August 2017, and he has not made any plans to flee.”

To the contrary, she said, “Mr. Miske’s conduct during the past three years constitutes compelling evidence of his commitment to remain in Hawaii, appear as required, and mount a lawful and vigorous defense.”

So far seven of Miske’s 10 co-defendants have been detained without bail.

The post ‘A Heart Of Gold’: The Other Side Of Accused Crime Boss Michael Miske appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

State health officials say an employee potluck potentially caused the recent outbreak of COVID-19 cases at Honolulu Hale, but Honolulu’s mayor says he has no idea what they’re talking about.

In a news release Monday, the state’s COVID-19 Joint Information Center cited the potluck as a “potential transmission source” for 11 cases of the virus found at the headquarters for Oahu’s city government over the past two weeks.

However, the only recent event to resemble a potluck on Honolulu Hale grounds was a city employee’s July 24 retirement party held outside the building on the Civic Center campus, according to Mayor Kirk Caldwell.

Honolulu Hale remains almost entirely closed to the public as city and medical officials aim to contain a cluster of COVID-19 cases recently discovered there.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Some 25 to 30 participants collected bentos at the party over a two-hour period, Caldwell told Civil Beat on Wednesday. The city has a list of the employees who purchased the bentos and none of them have tested positive for COVID-19, he added.

“We don’t believe it came” from the retirement event, Caldwell said.

Caldwell said he heard about the party for the first time Wednesday after the state Department of Health cited a potluck as a potential outbreak source.

It’s still not clear whether the retirement party is the event in question, however. DOH spokesman Dan Dennison did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Wednesday.

Caldwell spokesman Alexander Zannes said he asked DOH for details on when and where the potluck occurred. “They couldn’t give us that information,” Zannes said. “they said they didn’t have that information.”

Mayor Kirk Caldwell says that when state health officials report COVID-19 cases: “It’s not real specific.”

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

“It’d be great if they told us,” Caldwell added. “Give us the evidence that you base your statement on.”

He said he didn’t think the DOH’s public statement signaled that there’s friction between state and city officials as they navigate the pandemic.

“It’s just how the DOH reports things,” Caldwell said. “It’s not real specific.”

On Wednesday, the number of Honolulu Hale employees to test positive rose to 13, the mayor added. Eleven of them are from the city’s Department of Budget and Fiscal Services. The building closed almost entirely to the public on Monday as city officials and medical staff aim to contain the cluster of cases there.

A medical team led by Dr. Scott Miscovich, a private physician, tested 474 employees who work at the building on Monday, Caldwell reported.

Caldwell said he issued a memo Wednesday asking city employees working in facilities across Oahu to refrain from gathering in lunchrooms. The memo also reminded them to wear masks and practice physical distancing, he said.

His office is currently drafting a new directive to prohibit large gatherings of city employees other than for official business and to use online meeting software for that business where possible.

The post Mayor: ‘Give Us Evidence’ Potluck Caused Virus Cluster At Honolulu Hale appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The major work to build Honolulu’s rail line in and around the airport is now about five months behind schedule, and the issues slowing that progress are now listed as perhaps the biggest risks facing the project.

On Thursday, officials with the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation took steps that they hope will eventually trim the delays on the “Airport Guideway and Stations” contract work.

The AGS contract, awarded to the joint venture Shimmick/Traylor/Granite in 2016 for $875 million, already faced unexpected hurdles in 2018 when crews encountered a contaminated water site while drilling column shafts near the airport.

Now, HART reports STG is locked in a dispute with Hitachi Rail, the company building the rail line’s trains and controls, over which party is responsible for a four- to six-month delay completing the four stations along that five-mile stretch of the route.

Enormous gantry cranes are used to build the rail line near the airport. HART officials hope that spending millions of additional dollars to shuffle them around the project can reduce delays on that construction contract.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Hitachi says it faces increased costs because of the delay in gaining access to those stations, according to HART. That’s similar to the delays Hitachi faced during rail construction on Oahu’s westside.

However, STG counters that Hitachi is primarily responsible for the delay because it didn’t provide sufficient designs for where to install its conduits and other equipment, according to the rail agency.

Whoever’s to blame, HART expects a claim for added costs to hit over the dispute — although officials didn’t say how much at Thursday’s meeting of the HART board’s Project Oversight Committee.

Construction there has also faced what could amount to a $40 million delay relocating utility lines along Ualena Street. Glenn Nohara, who chairs the Project Oversight Committee, disclosed that figure during the group’s April meeting.

Rail construction is currently progressing across the airport.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

HART has said that the matter involves Hawaiian Electric Co.’s approvals of STG’s plans to do that relocation work. HECO says that the STG designs were sub-par, requiring “corrections and revisions.”

Nohara and the other volunteer board members on the committee Thursday gave initial approval to a change order for up to $4.5 million that aims to speed things up. The entire HART board will need to give final approval at an upcoming meeting.

Those dollars would cover the costs for STG to re-deploy its three massive gantry cranes erecting the rail line’s elevated concrete pathway along Oahu’s south shore.

Crews would move the westernmost crane from the construction area near Pearl Harbor to Ualena Street now that the utility relocation work there is done.

HART hopes to trim the delay by as many as 163 days by reshuffling the gantry canes. STG was initially supposed to finish that work in May 2021 but that completion has since been pushed to as late as December 2021, according to the agency’s internal June report.

Now, HART and STG aim to have the work done no later than Oct. 31, 2021, representing the five-month delay.

The post Honolulu Rail Costs To Climb With Dispute Over Airport Section appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

As the spread of COVID-19 spiraled out of control over the last week on Oahu, a story emerged about mismanagement at the Hawaii Department of Health. Despite previous assurances, Gov. David Ige on Thursday acknowledged that the department hadn’t hired enough disease investigators to contain the virus.

On Friday, the state epidemiologist responsible for blowing the whistle on the department’s failure came forward to tell her story, standing with a U.S. congressional representative and a prominent medical doctor at the forefront of the fight against the virus.

Jennifer Smith, a doctor of virology and an epidemiological specialist with the state Department of Health, explained how she and her colleagues, commonly called contact tracers, were so understaffed that she felt she had to begin looking outside the department for help.

Department of Health virologist Jennifer Smith exposed the shortage of contact tracers within the department.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

By last week, state lawmakers were calling Dr. Sarah Park, the state epidemiologist, to testify, and they later stormed the Department of Health offices to fact check whether there were really as many contact tracers as Park claimed. Never slow to engage on public health issues as a leader in the state’s COVID-19 response, Lt. Gov. Josh Green, who is a medical doctor, also weighed in.

On Thursday, Ige announced changes meant to solve the problems, including a vow to bring on board more contact tracers and the removal of Park from her previous role overseeing the investigators.

None of that would have happened if not for Smith, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said during a press conference outside the federal courthouse in Honolulu.

“We wouldn’t be standing here today without Dr. Smith,” Gabbard said.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said she will have news next week of a congressional inquiry into Hawaii Health Department matters.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Dr. Scott Miscovich, who has been leading efforts to bolster Hawaii’s testing response, agreed.

“She’s the catalyst,” Miscovich said. He added that Smith had shared with policymakers not just her observations but also documentation showing the number of active contact tracers and their case loads.

Janice Okubo, a department spokeswoman, declined to say whether Smith had helped prompt the changes, citing the confidentiality of personnel matters. Instead, Okubo reiterated the bulk of a statement from the day before, when Ige promised to do better.

“The Department of Health is acutely aware of the important role of disease investigation in fighting this pandemic,” the DOH statement said. “We have brought on additional staffing and resources and are working to further expand and realign the work of our disease investigation staff. We have expedited the redeployment of DOH staff from other programs, established teams of National Guard personnel, and continue to work with the University of Hawaii, Medical Reserve Corps and other entities to recruit skilled and knowledgeable workers.

“The work of our entire public health staff is a testament to the enduring commitment the department has to Hawaii,” the statement added.

Okubo declined to comment on a number of specific statements made by Smith and Gabbard.

Although technically known as a disease investigator, Smith’s duties include interviewing people who have tested positive for the disease then tracking down all their close contacts, defined as people who had been within six feet of the infected person for at least 15 minutes in the previous two weeks.

The close contacts then theoretically can be tested to see if they have the virus, or, even if not tested at least stay isolated for two weeks while they see if they get sick.

The idea behind such contact tracing is that, if done quickly, it can contain the virus in clusters.

The problem was there weren’t nearly enough contact tracers to do it quickly, Smith said. By some estimates, an island the population of Oahu would need a few hundred contact tracers during a pandemic. In this case, Oahu had fewer than 10 actively working, Smith said.

This meant that the few on the job were overwhelmed as the virus spread.

Given the demands of cold calling and explaining bad news to as many as dozens of close contacts of an infected person, Smith said a manageable case load is about three cases at a time. But department staff had far more than that.

For example, she said, in a recent week as cases began to escalate, she started with 22 on a Tuesday, then had 47 on Wednesday and 59 on Friday. There was simply no way to reach that many people. With lives depending on her doing a job she simply could not do, Smith said she had a panic attack and had to leave work.

In the health department’s statement, the spokeswoman said the agency as of Friday has 100 active contact tracers and administrative staff on Oahu.

Case Surge Is Likely To Continue

Despite the challenges, Smith said she’s ready to continue. She said she expects the case count to rise before it falls.

“There’s more coming; this is not the end,” she said. “And we need to be ready when that happens.”

Asked if she was worried about retaliation for speaking out, she said she wasn’t.

“What more can they do to us?” she asked. “They beat us into the ground already.”

The press conference with Smith could have been a fitting denouement for the week’s dramatic events, but Gabbard said it will not stop there. She said Hawaii needs 560 contact tracers to deal with the widening crisis.

She said the mismanagement by Anderson and Park was so profound that Congress must step in to ensure the agency has properly spent some $50 million in federal money that was supposed to be used for testing and contact tracing.

She also criticized Ige for not holding Park and Anderson accountable.

“What will it take for our state leaders to actually fight for the people of Hawaii?” she asked.

Miscovich said the medical community was eager to step in and take over the effort. He said it could easily muster and train 560 contact tracers by the end of next week from the ranks of health care workers.

The post This Whistleblower Exposed The Health Department’s COVID-19 Shortcomings appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Editor’s note: The arrest last month of Mike Miske by federal agents, coming in the midst of a years-long public corruption investigation that is still playing out, has captivated many in Hawaii, especially those familiar with Miske’s reputation and history of high-profile bad behavior. Miske has been at least tangentially involved in the federal investigation into former Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, his deputy prosecutor wife Katherine, other Honolulu police officers, the elected prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro and top city officials like Corporation Counsel Donna Leong and Managing Director Roy Amemiya. In this piece, longtime Honolulu investigative reporter Ian Lind has painstakingly researched court and police records for a look at Miske’s early steps on a path that could lead to the death penalty, a rarity in Hawaii. 

The federal indictment of Michael Miske Jr. and 10 others for allegedly operating a violent criminal enterprise has focused public attention on the 46-year-old Honolulu businessman.

Miske is best known to the public for his Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, which has advertised itself heavily for years, and his part-ownership and management of the popular M Nightclub in downtown Honolulu’s Restaurant Row, which opened in 2012 and closed in 2016 after a series of highly publicized assaults on or near club premises.

Federal prosecutors allege that while the exact origin of Miske’s racketeering conspiracy is unknown, it was already up and running as a criminal gang “by at least in or about the late 1990s.”

A review of court records, newspaper archives, and other available public documents from that period confirms that by the time Mike Miske was 21 years old, he was a felon, a multiple offender, and well on his way to a criminal career.

This is, of course, not the end of the story. It is just the beginning. But it is undoubtedly a disturbing and potentially revealing first chapter.

Michael John Miske Jr. was born in Honolulu on Feb. 15, 1974. He was named after his father, who had arrived in Honolulu a decade before when his father, Walter L. Miske — Mike Miske’s grandfather, a jeweler by profession — relocated his family from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to begin a new job in the islands.

The senior Mike Miske, who attended Kalani High School, died in 1980 at age 28, when Michael Jr. was just 6 years old. He was an only child.

After his father’s death, young Michael and his mother were folded into her extended local family and had less contact with his Miske relatives. His mother, Maydeen (Lau) Miske, remarried and the family moved into a house near some of her relatives in Waimanalo. Another son, Michael’s step-brother John B. Stancil, was born when Miske was 13. He is a co-defendant in the current federal case.

As a teenager, Miske reportedly had trouble with his new stepfather and they often tangled, eventually causing him to leave home.

“When his mother remarried he struggled to find a place in his new home,” recalls his cousin and business partner, Allen Lau, in a character reference letter filed in court by Miske’s defense attorneys. “He would often stay at my house sleeping on my parents’ couch or even at the beach.”

Although people recall Miske attending Kailua High School, he does not appear in the school’s yearbook or list of graduates for the year his class graduated.

“After high school Mike was determined to make something out of himself,” Lau wrote. “He started a few small businesses before approaching me about opening one together.”

That may be true, but court records show Miske was well on his way to a busy career in crime by the time he was 21.

A Year In The Life

Mike Miske turned 19 years old on Feb. 15, 1993.

Shortly before his birthday, Miske was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault and criminal property damage (a petty misdemeanor). He was arraigned in Honolulu’s 1st Circuit Court on Feb. 16, represented by a court appointed attorney, Reinhard Mohr. 

Miske pleaded not guilty, asked for a jury trial, and his case was set for trial in August. These were the first charges to appear on his criminal record after becoming an adult.

Court records show prosecutors were unable to contact their complaining witness, and when she failed to appear for the trial, the charges against Miske were dismissed.

On Feb. 5, 1993, just a week before Miske’s 19th birthday, police seized his car in connection with a burglary and theft case, according to a legal notice published later when the car was designated for forfeiture and sale.

In April 1993, Miske was charged with tampering with physical evidence, a misdemeanor, and again represented by Mohr in the Kaneohe District Court proceedings. These charges were thrown out after prosecutors acknowledged exceeding the 180-day limit for providing a “speedy trial.”

A Tale Of Two Cars

Then sometime around midnight on June 12, 1993, a red 1988 Honda Prelude was stolen from the Waikiki Theater parking structure. Several hours later, around 4:45 a.m., police found the car at Kainalu Elementary School in Kailua, where witnesses reported seeing two men drive up in another car, enter the school property, then remove the stolen car’s tires and rims, which they stacked next to the cafeteria. Along with the tires and rims, valued at over $2,000, they also took a CD player, about 40 CDs, two dozen cassette tapes, and a matching Hawaiian gold bracelet and ring valued at $800.

Soon after the two suspects left the scene, a responding police officer stopped their car. The driver was a 17-year-old male student at Kalaheo High School, and the getaway car belonged to his mother. Mike Miske was in the passenger seat. Their fingerprints were later found on the rims and wheel covers of the stolen car. Both were subsequently arrested and charged with theft in the second degree, with the younger man being referred to family court.

At the time of this arrest, the 19-year-old Miske was described as 6 feet tall, 150 pounds, with a slim build and tan complexion. He reported being employed at Honolulu Gold Werks in “jewelry maintenance.” Honolulu Gold Werks was a trade name registered by one of his father’s brothers, state business registration records show.

Just five days later, on June 17, 1993, Miske bought a red 2-door 1983 Honda Prelude from a private owner in Kailua. The following day, a similar 1986 red 2-door Honda Prelude was stolen from a car lot on North Nimitz, according to a Honolulu police report later filed in court in an unrelated proceeding.

And on June 20, the older car was found abandoned on Kapaa Quarry Road with its license plates and serial number removed. Although Miske was identified as the man who had purchased the car, it had been registered to another man, Bodie Suter.

The following month, Miske met a local man in a Mapunapuna parking lot and sold him a 1986 red Honda Prelude for $5,300 in cash, apparently using an altered version of the older car’s title to transfer the stolen car to the new buyer. Police records show Miske had already left the area with the cash before the buyer noticed the title misidentified the car as a 1983 model.

In August 1993, while the case of the switched red Honda Preludes was still being investigated, Miske and a cousin were charged with attempted theft, criminal property damage, and being in possession of burglary tools. Both defendants were represented by Mohr. 

When the case came to trial in July 1994, nearly a year later, Mohr again argued prosecutors had exceeded the deadline for holding a “speedy trial,” and the judge agreed. The charges were dismissed. Prosecutors were given 30 days in which to refile the charges, but elected not to pursue the case.

But in December 1993, the investigation of the red Hondas moved forward when police were finally able to trace the stolen car to the man who bought it from Miske. The car was searched, and police found its serial number had been removed. Police confiscated the stolen car, and the unhappy buyer was out both the cash and the vehicle.

Before the police moved in, Miske was indicted for the theft and fraudulent use of credit cards, and charged with second-degree theft, a Class C felony. It was his first felony in a quickly escalating string of charges. The indictment landed just a month before his 20th birthday.

In February 1994, just a week after his 20th birthday, Miske and Bodie Suter were arrested for their buy-steal-and-switch scam involving the two red Hondas. Both men were unemployed at the time. Both were charged with second-degree theft.

Just two months after those charges were filed, on April 14, 1994, Mike Miske’s son, Caleb, was born, according to a birth notice published in a local newspaper. Miske and the child’s mother were not married.

Meanwhile, the cases involving the two red Honda Preludes dragged on in court for more than a year. Miske, now 21 and with an infant child, finally copped a plea in May 1995 in return for a lighter sentence. The plea included both the credit card theft and the theft and sale of the red Honda.

Prosecutors told the court Miske would qualify as a multiple offender and therefore be eligible for “enhanced” sentencing, but they agreed they would not seek any enhancement in the case.

In return, Miske entered a plea of no contest to all charges. He was then found guilty of fraudulent use of credit cards, and several counts of felony theft. He was sentenced to five years probation and 200 hours of community service, and ordered to pay $5,300 in restitution, the amount of cash he received when he sold the stolen car.

Out Of The Frying Pan

Despite receiving what in retrospect looks like a very lucky reprieve — probation instead of prison for his multiple convictions — Miske almost immediately got himself in serious trouble once again.

On May 17, 1995, just two days after his plea deal on the earlier charges was approved in court, a police officer stopped a black 1992 BMW four-door sedan seen speeding near Castle Medical Center just after 8 p.m. The officer asked the driver, later identified as Miske, for his license, registration and insurance card.

“The driver opened the glove compartment and a package fell out. The driver hid the package, removed the key from the glove compartment lock and began to start the car,” HPD Ofc. David Alices recounted in a later police report on the incident.

Alices said that when he went to the driver’s side of the car, the driver grabbed his arm and drove away, dragging him about 20 feet before he fell. The officer was treated at Castle for “a deep contusion to his left shoulder” which was considered by the examining doctor “to be a serious bodily injury,” case notes show.

The registered owner of the car, Rick Calhau, showed up at the Kaneohe Police Station about 2:30 a.m. to report the car had been stolen from behind his home. Calhau was a 28-year-old car enthusiast and the owner of The Tint Shop, an auto glass tinting company.

Calhau told police Mike Miske was “a good friend.” Calhau said Miske had driven the car before, but did not have permission to take the car that night.

Calhau told police Miske had left Oahu, but that he might know who had been driving the car. He refused to name the driver, and declined to take a lie detector test as suggested by police.

Calhau then said he wanted to speak to his attorney before making any further statement. He “then called a person named ‘Bodie’ to get the number of his attorney,” according to a police report on the incident.

The attorney was Reinhard Mohr, who explained to police he was representing the driver of the car and not Calhau.

“Bodie” was identified by police as Bodie Suter, “a known associate of Calhau” as well as the same person charged with Miske in the car theft and switch of the red Hondas two years previously.

After police positively identified Miske as the driver who had dragged officer Alices, a Crimestoppers news release was circulated which included the 21-year-old Miske’s photo. Miske was arrested early in the evening on May 26 at a home on Maunawili Road. He told police he was now a “self-employed glass tinter.”

On June 14, 1995, Miske was indicted on charges of kidnapping, a Class A felony, the most serious category of criminal offenses which carry the most serious potential sentences; first-degree attempted assault, a Class B felony; and speeding, a violation. He was released on $25,000 cash bail posted by his mother, Maydeen Stancil, court records show.

These were the most serious charges Miske had faced to date. The case was set for trial in September, and Mohr, his lawyer, began working on another plea deal.

On Aug. 25, 1995, while awaiting trial on the kidnapping and assault charges, Miske was arrested again for second-degree terroristic threatening. Arrested in the same incident, but charged separately, was Rick Calhau, the tint shop owner whose BMW Miske had been driving.

Charges against both men were eventually dismissed once again when the complaining witness, not identified in court records, failed to appear.

‘Best Interest Of The Defendant’

Meanwhile, after several weeks of negotiations, Miske agreed to another package deal, pleading guilty to all three charges, kidnapping, assault and speeding. He was formally sentenced in January 1996 to serve five years probation on each of three counts, to run concurrently. His mother’s bail was returned.

Miske was required to obtain and maintain full-time employment or educational/vocational training as approved by his probation officer. He was also required to submit at reasonable times to drug testing, and to allow searches of himself, his residence, his vehicle or other property under his control. In addition, he agreed to enter drug or mental health treatment if ordered to do so by the adult probation department and to remain until clinically discharged.

Mohr went back to court the following year and asked to amend Miske’s guilty plea to a no contest plea.

“No contest plea (is) in the best interest of the defendant,” the court minutes noted. The amended plea was approved. Court minutes do not reflect any further comment.

Miske complied with the terms of his probation by landing a job with Oahu Termite and Pest Control, a well-established termite treatment company. Miske learned the pest control business from the company’s owner, Harry Kansaki, according to Miske’s sworn statement filed earlier this year in an unrelated lawsuit. The job provided the experience that would eventually allow Miske to start his own company, Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, several years later.

And at that point, Miske faded from the public record for most of the remaining term of his five-year probation.

Some of his associates weren’t so lucky.

Six months after the court allowed Miske to amend his guilty plea to no contest, his friend, Tint Shop owner Rick Calhau, suddenly went missing.

On Nov. 21, 1996, Calhau left home in Kaneohe shortly after 10 p.m.

“He told his wife he was going to visit friends in Kalihi and would return in an hour. But he never returned,” the Honolulu Advertiser reported.

Calhau’s family posted 4,000 “missing person” fliers and offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to his return. The money was not claimed, and police considered his disappearance to be suspicious.

Calhau was never seen again. He was declared legally dead in 2004 by then-Circuit Court Judge Karen Radius.

With Calhau missing and presumed dead, his registration of the trade name of his business, “The Tint Shop,” expired. In November 1998, Miske registered the same trade name, state business registration records show.

The following year Miske registered a new company, The Tint Shop Inc., at 916 Queen St. and before long the tinting business moved to 940 Queen St., the building where Kamaaina Termite has operated for 20 years, and that federal prosecutors allege “served as a headquarters for the planning of criminal activities.”

Then in February 1997, Bodie Suter, who had been arrested with Miske in the case involving the two red Honda Preludes, was charged in federal court with the sale, distribution or dispensing of narcotics. Court records indicate he had been previously considered a known drug dealer.

Suter ended up pleading guilty and was sentenced to 135 months imprisonment (11-1/4 years), followed by five years supervised release. He was released from federal prison in April 2006, according to federal inmate records.

And in December 1999, another of Mike Miske’s cousins, Craig Ivester, was charged with conspiracy to distribute narcotics and money laundering. Ivester’s mother and Miske’s mother are sisters, and the families lived close to each other in Waimanalo.

On the fourth day of Ivester’s trial, a discussion was held regarding “the jury’s concern for their safety,” court minutes show. Following questioning of the courtroom manager and jury clerk without the jury present, members of the jury were questioned, and the judge then addressed the jurors before the trial proceeded. Defense attorneys asked for a mistrial to be declared based on the jury’s concerns about their own safety. The motion was denied.

After a six-day trial, it took the jury less than a full day of deliberation to convict Ivester on two counts. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison on one count and 20 years on the other, court records show. He was finally released from federal custody on April 7, 2017.

Meanwhile, Reinhard Mohr was allowed to give up his law license in 1999 in lieu of facing disciplinary proceedings. Miske, now represented by attorney Michael Ostendorp, was back in court in December 1999 with a request to end his probation several months early. Miske’s probation officer told the court he had complied with all the terms and conditions, and she recommended early release. He was cut loose from court supervision just a few months later.

Miske, now 25 years old and with no visible financial resources, had just registered The Tint Shop Inc., a business using the same name as the one formerly owned and operated by his now-missing friend, Rick Calhau. And six months later, he registered Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control Inc., the company that federal prosecutors allege is at the center of a web of businesses used to promote and conceal his gang’s illegal activities for the last two decades.

Illustrations by John Pritchett.

The post From Early On, Miske Was On The Path To A Life Of Crime appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Colleen Hanabusa, a former congresswoman who came in third place in Honolulu’s mayoral election, is backing her former opponent Rick Blangiardi for the job.

In a press conference via Zoom on Monday morning, Hanabusa said that Blangiardi is the one she trusts to lead the city through its current pandemic crisis. In making her endorsement, the longtime Democrat is giving a boost to a self-described independent over Keith Amemiya, who has campaigned as a Democrat in the nonpartisan race.

Honolulu mayoral candidate Colleen Hanabusa came in third place.

Ronen Zilberman/Civil Beat

“I have always said throughout this campaign that rebuilding public confidence and faith in government, and trust in government, is going to be the greatest challenge for the next mayor,” she said. “I believe Rick Blangiardi is the person who can do that.”

In the Aug. 8 primary, Blangiardi was the top vote-getter with 69,510 votes. Amemiya came in second with 55,002. Hanabusa secured 50,120 votes.

Hanabusa, who made her state and federal experience the center of her campaign, acknowledged that neither general election candidate has the traditional political resume. However, Hanabusa said Blangiardi has the humility to admit what he doesn’t know.

“When there was a question asked of Rick that he didn’t know the answer, he would say ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out,'” she said. “You know how honest that is? As opposed to somebody who may appear programmed and like a puppet and anytime you say a keyword, they respond with something. Rick is genuine.”

Blangiardi said he has long respected Hanabusa and thought he might be competing against her in the general election.

Meanwhile, the Amemiya campaign says they have been “flooded” with support from organizations and individuals who backed Hanabusa in the primary.

“We are confident that our vision of a more fair, more just, and better run Honolulu will resonate with voters,” Amemiya said in a statement.

Asked about what’s next for Hanabusa – perhaps a run for governor in 2022 – she said “never say never.”

“Stay tuned,” she said.

The post Colleen Hanabusa Endorses Rick Blangiardi For Honolulu Mayor appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell is asking the City Council to formally replace Corporation Counsel Donna Leong, who had been on leave since January 2019 pending a federal investigation.

In a letter to council members dated Monday, the mayor said he is appointing Acting Corporation Counsel Paul Aoki to hold the job permanently.

“Mr. Aoki has accepted my call to take on the challenging task,” the mayor wrote. “He has been a Deputy Corporation Counsel, the First Deputy Corporation Counsel, and Acting Corporation Counsel, is an experienced, capable and dedicated leader, and I would deeply appreciate your confirmation of his appointment.”

Attorney Paul Aoki has been running the Corporation Counsel’s office.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Messages left with the mayor’s office and Leong’s attorney Lynn Panagakos were not returned on Tuesday. However, the mayor’s office shared a copy of Leong’s resignation letter dated July 13.

In it, she states she would retire effective Aug. 1.

“I had hoped to return to work to continue my service to the people of the City and to retire upon the expiration of your term,” she wrote. “Your recent actions make clear that this is no longer an option, and, thus, I submit this letter informing you of my retirement without waiver of my rights under the law with regard thereto.”

She did not specify what she meant by Caldwell’s “recent actions,” and Caldwell Communications Director Alexander Zannes did not respond to request for an explanation.

The city’s top civil attorney had been on paid leave since news broke that she received an FBI target letter, identifying her as someone about whom the feds have “substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime,” according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Honolulu Corporation Counsel Donna Leong has been off the job for over a year and a half.

Cory Lum/ Civil Beat

At the time, the mayor said the feds were reviewing Leong’s actions while investigating former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha and her husband, former Police Chief Louis Kealoha – both of whom have since been convicted of federal obstruction and conspiracy charges.

As of May 1, the city had Leong use her accrued vacation days as she transitioned to unpaid leave. The mayor’s office never explained the rationale for that transition.

Civil Beat asked Zannes last month if Leong had resigned, and he indicated that she had not – even though she had already submitted her resignation over a week prior.

“Donna Leong is currently on leave without pay and is using her accrued vacation leave,” Zannes said on July 23.

A draft resolution provided to council members provides no insight into the mayor’s decision to formally appoint Aoki now, over 18 months after Leong began her leave. But the move comes within weeks of Managing Director Roy Amemiya and former Honolulu Police Commission member Max Sword testifying before a grand jury that is investigating public corruption.

Councilman Ron Menor, who chairs the council’s executive matters and legal affairs committee, said he was pleased with the mayor’s appointment.

“I’m glad that the mayor’s administration is finally moving forward to officially select a new Corporation Counsel,” he said in a statement. “This decision is long overdue and will help to lift a legal cloud that has existed over the Department of the Corporation Counsel since Donna Leong went on leave.”

Aoki has worked in the Corporation Counsel’s office since 2013, according to a resume attached to the mayor’s letter. Previously, he worked for two private law firms and as a Hawaii public defender.

The post Caldwell Files To Officially Replace Corporation Counsel Under Investigation appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The Army Corps of Engineers has overhauled its flood-control plans for the Ala Wai watershed, scrapping the upland detention basins that previously sparked much of the local opposition to the project.

In their place, the Corps looks to install culverts and bypass channels to guide fast-moving flood waters swiftly out to sea. It’s no longer looking to hold back their torrential flow in the upland valleys.

It’s an abrupt shift in strategy that local Corps officials outlined in a new “engineering documentation report” released Monday. The changes were necessary, the Corps said, largely due to shortcomings it found in its original modeling compared to the more recent work.

“Significant differences were observed between the two modeling results,” the report states.

That has local critics expressing more concerns about the flood-control effort. They question how the original, $345 million design could proceed so far based on insufficient data and modeling.

All the basins and detention centers in the watershed’s upper reaches have been cut from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ latest flood control plans.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

“That’s a huge, huge, huge error,” said Sidney Lynch, president of Protect Our Ala Wai Watershed. The grassroots group sued last year to stop the flood control plans from advancing and succeeded in getting an injunction pending further environmental review.

“If they didn’t do the engineering properly on the first project … what about what’s left of the project?” Lynch said Tuesday. The grassroots group still has not had a chance to thoroughly review the revised plan, however.

The Corps had already announced last year its intent to eliminate the basins in the Palolo and Makiki valleys. Under the new revisions, it would scrap the remaining three upland detention basins and a debris catchment structure in the Manoa Valley.

The report follows nearly a yearlong process in which the agency updated its models and found that the detention basins wouldn’t be as effective as it originally thought largely due to the steepness of the terrain, said Jeff Herzog, the federal agency’s project director.

“We’ve gone from a system of detention to a system of conveyance,” he said Monday.

It also follows strong, widespread criticism of the project’s earlier plans for a flood-control system that included the basins.

“I personally feel the public outcry forced these changes, as much as the engineering design. It forced them to look at these things seriously,” Lynch said.

She said Herzog has been “very sincere in his efforts to get community input,” but he and his Corps colleagues remain limited in what they can change because of constraints tied to the federal funding.

Indeed, a project centered on habitat restoration — something that multiple community groups said they would rather see  — was previously scrapped. Now, the Corps’ sole focus is flood control, prompting complaints that it’s advancing with “half a project.” The Corps says it might still pursue smaller, isolated restoration projects within the state’s most densely populated watershed.

Herzog said the Corps has briefed community groups and neighborhood boards in the area. So far, the project’s staunchest opponents remain “absolutely concerned” despite the changes, he said.

“But I believe we are starting to build a relationship where at least they feel now that they’re part of the process and we’re not trying to sneak anything by them,” he said. “They care about the community, and they want to make sure we’re not going in and making things worse.”

The new designs feature a 1,500-foot long culvert that would run along the Ala Wai Canal, starting at the Makiki Stream and then heading west along the Hawaii Convention Center promenade. The added channel would help keep the Makiki Stream from backing up in a heavy storm, Herzog said.

It’s not clear yet whether that channel would be above or below the surface.

Heavy rains flow from the Koolau mountains and down into the Ala Wai watershed, spilling into Waikiki. This includes Manoa Valley. In the distance is Waikiki.

Marcel Honore/Civil Beat

In Manoa, the designs would add a bypass channel running underneath the Manoa Marketplace to redirect fast moving flood waters instead of holding them back with the detention basins.

The Corps’ new plans also call for installing a pump station at the Ala Wai Golf Course instead of at the Waikiki-Kapahulu Public Library. The move would allow the agency to remove about a half-mile of wall along the Waikiki side of the Ala Wai Canal, from Lewers Street to Kapahulu Avenue, Herzog said.

Plans for the wall on that side of the canal remain in place for the rest of the way to Ala Moana Boulevard, Herzog added.

Thanks to the Ala Wai Canal, a severe storm could leave much of Waikiki and its surrounding neighborhoods underwater, experts say. The Corps has estimated that each year the popular tourist hub, along with its 54,000 residents and nearly 80,000 daily visitors, faces a 1 percent chance of a major flood that would cause $1.14 billion in damage to more than 3,000 structures.

Under its previous designs, the flood control project was expected to cost some $345 million, with the state agreeing to pay $125 million and federal dollars covering the rest.

The Corps is not estimating how much the new plan will cost, although the report gives an early projection of $376 million. That price includes a $48 million contingency.

The new plans still have to go through state and federal environmental reviews. Herzog said he expected that process to run through sometime next summer.

The Corps has also yet to sign a so-called project participation agreement with the city to maintain the flood control features. All of the design plans out of the Corps’ local office so far have been recommendations. Top brass at the agency’s headquarters in Washington will have to give final approval. Those officials have been kept in the loop of the changes and support them, Herzog said Monday.

David Kimo Frankel, an attorney representing Protect Our Ala Wai Watershed, said the Corps should consider a proposal by University of Hawaii Manoa professors Chip Fletcher — one of Hawaii’s preeminent experts on sea level rise — and Judith Stilgenbaur to restore the Ala Wai golf course into a natural wetland and flooded-field agricultural system that could better absorb flood waters.

The post Feds Revamp Ala Wai Flood Control Plan After Community Opposition appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The federal prosecutor leading the years-long corruption probe in Honolulu says attorneys have agreed to sentencing dates for Louis and Katherine Kealoha and others convicted in the case more than a year ago.

The effort to control the spread of coronavirus in Hawaii has delayed sentencing in this case as well as many others.

Now, according to a letter to U.S. District Court Judge J. Michael Seabright from Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wheat, lawyers representing Louis Kealoha and Katherine Kealoha can be available for sentencing on Nov. 3. Lawyers for two Honolulu police officers convicted in the case — Derek Hahn and Minh Hung “Bobby” Nguyen — can be available on Nov. 4.

Former Honolulu police chief Louis Kealoha, his former deputy prosecutor wife, Katherine, and the two former officers were convicted on a number of felony charges in June 2019 in connection with the theft of the Kealohas mailbox, a federal crime that the couple tried to frame her uncle for with the help of police officers. The Kealohas also pleaded guilty to other felonies related to misuse of funds and bank fraud stemming from money Katherine was overseeing for two children as their financial guardian.

Federal prosecutors have recommended a sentence of 14 years for Katherine and about seven years for Louis. She has been in custody in the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu since the trial; he has been out on bail. Louis filed for divorce from Katherine in October.

Read Civil Beat’s coverage of the ongoing federal corruption probe here.

The post Kealoha Sentencing Could Be Nov. 3 appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

For nearly six months, Megan Kau, a local lawyer who’s running a campaign to become Honolulu’s top elected prosecutor, represented a company in federal court that was owned by alleged Hawaii crime boss Michael Miske.

Though many of the court records have been sealed from public view, the documents reflect that Kau as well as several other attorneys were hired by Miske’s company Hawaii Partners LLC to help him get back possession of his Boston Whaler boat, the Painkiller.

Federal investigators seized the vessel as part of their investigation into the alleged kidnapping and murder of 21-year-old Jonathan Fraser.

Megan Kau is a former city prosecutor and private lawyer who has represented a wide array of interests.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

In a recently unsealed indictment, Miske is accused of orchestrating Fraser’s murder after he mistakenly believed he was to blame for a car accident that killed Miske’s son, Caleb, and purchasing the Painkiller to dump Fraser’s body in the ocean.

Kau told Civil Beat she couldn’t talk about the specifics of the case or her eventual withdrawal in August 2018 due to the confidential nature of the proceedings. She said she was hired by Delia-Anne Fabro, who at the time was listed as the manager for Hawaii Partners, although Kau understood that Miske was still involved with the company.

Fabro is Caleb Miske’s widow, and federal authorities say she was used by Michael Miske as a front for some of his companies, including Kamaaina Termite and Pest Control, to help hide his assets, confuse investigators and thwart his eventual prosecution.

Kau, a former deputy prosecutor for the City and County of Honolulu, said she was aware of Miske’s reputation at the time she took the case in late 2017 as well as the rumors surrounding Miske’s alleged involvement in Fraser’s disappearance.

She reiterated that Fabro, not Miske, was the one who hired her to take on a case that she described as narrowly tailored to the seizure of private property by the federal government.

“I am a criminal defense attorney, and I am also a civil litigator,” Kau said. “I represent murderers, rapists, kidnappers and people who are fighting over money.

“I represent people who are fighting over the Kawananakoa trust. I represent people fighting against businesses because they say the businesses are stealing money. I represent people who have slipped and fallen in private entities like Costco and Sam’s Club. I represented people who were in helicopters and have died. That’s my job right now.”

Kau said she’s spent nearly a decade building a successful private practice, and that her client list should not take away from her desire to serve as Honolulu’s prosecuting attorney.

Michael Miske faces a series of federal charges, several of which are eligible for the death penalty.

“It’s a different job,” she said. “Just because I represent police officers doesn’t mean I’m not going to prosecute police officers. I’m the only candidate who is taking the position that we have to objectively apply the criminal law against everyone that violates the law, whether it is a rich or poor person, Hawaiian or non-Hawaiian, police officer or non-police officer, doctor or non-doctor janitor or non-janitor.”

From the start of her campaign, Kau has painted herself as an anti-corruption candidate.

If elected, Kau said she plans to sanitize the Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which in recent years has been tainted by an ongoing corruption investigation by the U.S. Justice Department.

Already former deputy prosecutor Katherine Kealoha and her husband, retired Honolulu police chief Louis Kealoha have been convicted of a series of federal crimes stemming from their attempts to frame a family member for the theft of their mailbox.

Keith Kaneshiro, who Kau is hoping to replace as Honolulu’s prosecuting attorney, is also the target of the same team of federal investigators, who believe he may have committed criminal acts while in office.

Kaneshiro has taken paid leave from office, which is currently run by Dwight Nadamoto, one of several candidates Kau beat out during the Aug. 8 primary to advance to the general election in November where she will square off against retired Circuit Court judge Steven Alm.

Kau said that if she wins in November she will get rid of any employee who she believes helped or protected Kealoha while she committed criminal acts.

“People are sick of politicians doing backdoor deals, owing people and being complacent,” Kau said. “I’m going to shake things up and I’m going to tell you exactly what’s going on. I don’t hide anything. Everything that I do is a matter of public record.”

The fact that Kau represented Hawaii Partners hasn’t stopped her from raising questions about Miske and his relationship with top officials in law enforcement, particularly those inside the Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

In fact, she already knew about Miske’s supposed ties to local law enforcement through another client.

At the same time Kau worked for Hawaii Partners she represented Honolulu police sergeant Albert Lee in a 2016 drunken driving case that she argued was the result of malicious prosecution in retaliation for Lee’s arrest of Miske after he fled the scene of a traffic stop in 2015 and threatened the officer who tried to issue him a citation.

Miske threatened the initial officer, Jared Spiker, in a series of phone calls in which he told him he “better be careful” and that he should back off because he could “go to the top of the food chain.”

After that threat, Katherine Kealoha, a deputy prosecutor at the time who was married to Spiker’s boss, Honolulu Police Chief Louis Kealoha, contacted Spiker and told him to stand down. That order, email records show, was given to Kealoha by Roger Lau, a special assistant to Kaneshiro.

Kau said Lee was supposed to testify before a federal grand jury about the apparent connections between Miske and Katherine Kealoha, but never did because of the accident and his subsequent prosecution. She said she’s also provided information herself to the federal prosecutors who have been investigating the Kealohas and Kaneshiro.

When Fabro hired her to represent Hawaii Partners, Kau said, she had already begun making the connections between Miske, Kealoha and the prosecutors office.

“I don’t hide who I represent, I take all the big cases,” Kau said.

“Here’s what you have to be afraid of,” she added, “someone who’s not talking about what they’re doing.”

The post Honolulu Prosecutor Candidate Has Been On Both Sides Of Alleged Crime Boss appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Former Family Court Judge Michael Broderick and former Lt. Gov. Doug Chin are officially members of the Honolulu Police Commission after the City Council unanimously voted to confirm them on Wednesday.

“Both appointees withstood rigorous questioning by the committee on public safety,” said Councilman Tommy Waters, who chairs the committee. “Their answers were forthright, honest and direct, which I appreciated very much.”

Attorneys Michael Broderick and Doug Chin are joining the commission at a time of heightened scrutiny of police officers.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

The commission has the power to hire and fire the chief, investigate complaints, review the budget and annual report, and review policy.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said he appointed both commissioners keeping in mind the police reforms demanded by people worldwide who have protested brutality and racism. Both Broderick and Chin said they want to bring more accountability and transparency to the Honolulu Police Department.

In addition to experience as a judge, Broderick was also the director of the Hawaii State Judiciary and the Judiciary’s Center for Alternative Dispute Resolution. He is currently the president and CEO of the YMCA of Honolulu. However, he plans to step down by the end of the year to “open his own business offering services in mediation, arbitration, facilitation, neutral fact finding and executive coaching,” the nonprofit said in a news release on Thursday.

“Michael Broderick truly comes to the Police Commission with a great deal of experience,” Waters said.

Before serving as the lieutenant governor in 2018, Chin was the state’s attorney general from 2015 to 2018. Prior to that, he worked as Honolulu’s managing director under Mayor Peter Carlisle and as a prosecutor for nearly 15 years. More recently, he worked as a partner at the law firm Carlsmith Ball.

Chin’s nomination created some pushback from activists who pointed to his past anti-gay views, for which he has apologized, and his work lobbying for private prisons.

“There was some written testimony in opposition, however, the committee, through rigorous questions that lasted almost an hour, I believe he addressed all of those concerns,” Waters said. “I’m satisfied that he will carefully and fairly conduct his duty as a commissioner to the best of his ability.”

Broderick replaces Karen Chang, who resigned from the commission as her husband Rick Blangiardi prepared to run for mayor. Chin is filling the seat of Loretta Sheehan, who stepped down in frustration with the commission’s lack of power to affect change. The seat of Steve Levinson, who resigned alongside Sheehan, is still vacant.

The post Two New Honolulu Police Commissioners Confirmed By City Council appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

A Honolulu police officer facing charges for domestic violence and criminal property damage is among the defendants whose trials are delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Ofc. Michael Rourke’s case is one of several domestic abuse cases involving Honolulu police officers referred to the prosecuting attorney’s office in 2019, although only four were accepted for prosecution.

Rourke, 34, was arrested last September following a July 2019 incident with a 42-year-old woman in which he allegedly shoved her by the neck and destroyed her cellphone, according to the police report.

The woman told police Rourke later “manipulated and harassed” her to the point that she was hospitalized for three days with acute stress disorder, a condition brought on by trauma.

“In the past, Michael has threatened to make cases against me, and threaten (sic) that he would ruin me,” the woman, whose name is redacted, said in a written statement to police. 

Officers who are arrested for domestic violence are stripped of their policing powers, HPD said.

Anthony Quintano/Civil Beat

HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu declined to discuss Rourke’s case but said in a statement that an administrative investigation into his conduct is continuing.

“Officers who wear the HPD badge are expected to maintain the highest standards of conduct at all times,” she said. “All allegations involving domestic violence are fully investigated. Possible disciplinary action ranges up to and includes termination.” 

Rourke pleaded not guilty in September. In February, a judge dismissed the case because the prosecutor, Emlyn Higa, wasn’t prepared to go to trial, court records show. Higa said he was sick that day. 

Honolulu Police Ofc. Michael Rourke was charged with abuse of a household or family member and criminal destruction of property.

Honolulu Police Department

In February, the prosecuting attorney’s office refiled the charges against Rourke, and he pleaded not guilty again in April. A trial scheduled for July was postponed because of coronavirus-related courtroom closures. It was then slated for September, but all jury trials have been pushed back again because of high COVID-19 case counts. 

“Just like every other criminal defendant, he is presumed innocent unless and until the government proves that he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” said his attorney, Megan Kau, who is also running for prosecuting attorney.  

The complainant in this case alleges that in July 2019, he pushed her into the headboard of a bed, causing bruising, and threw her phone at her. A few months later, he took her phone again, threatened her and harassed her, she said.

Nine cases of Honolulu officers accused of domestic abuse were referred to the prosecuting attorney’s office in 2019, according to HPD. Four were accepted for prosecution, Yu said.

Two cases went to trial. One was dismissed and the other resulted in a not guilty verdict. The other two are pending cases, according to Yu.

This year, HPD referred one case to the Attorney General’s Office, but it was declined, Yu said.

“Police use power and dominance as tools in their work life and it can become a part of their identity,” said Nanci Kreidman, chief executive officer of the Domestic Violence Action Center. “Power and control are the central, foundational features of abuse.” 

Civil Beat requested an interview with HPD to discuss how the department handles cases of domestic violence in its ranks. Instead, Yu pointed to HPD’s policy which states when officers are arrested for domestic violence, they are immediately stripped of their police powers, including their service weapon. 

Rourke is now working desk duty in the IT division, Yu said. 

Last year, Chief Susan Ballard announced a new “resiliency training” program to help officers get a handle on their mental and emotional states. The announcement came after a number of officers were arrested on abuse charges.

But the curriculum isn’t really about domestic violence. Extensive and meaningful domestic violence training should be required for all officers on a periodic basis, according to Kreidman. 

“This is community crime that does not discriminate, impacts us all, costs us all a great deal, and we must take it seriously and see it as a priority for the wellbeing of our community,” Kreidman said. “We need the police to say those words, believe those words and act according to that language.”

Many other police departments are the first to share the news when their own officers end up in handcuffs, but that’s not the case at the Honolulu Police Department. HPD never announced the arrest of Rourke, who has been on the force for seven years. It took six weeks for the department to share the police report after Civil Beat requested it. 

HPD is required to provide basic details about officer misconduct to the Legislature. Although names are not listed and the information is often vague, the reports show one domestic violence case in 2019, two in 2018, none in 2017, seven in 2016 and 10 in 2015.

State lawmakers recently passed a law that would require public disclosure of detailed police misconduct records. The bill is waiting for Gov. David Ige’s signature.  

The post Honolulu Police Officer Awaiting Trial For Domestic Abuse appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Alexandria Niewijk Suthard was walking her dog in her Kahala neighborhood last week when she entered the local park to look at a new sign that had been posted. It said the area was closed because of COVID-19. 

As she turned around to leave, a police car pulled up. A Honolulu police officer got out, told her she had broken the law for stepping off the sidewalk and into the park and issued her a criminal citation, Suthard said. 

Though Suthard was alone in an empty park – not posing a high risk of COVID-19 spread, according to experts – she is now ordered to attend a remote court hearing. People found in violation are guilty of a misdemeanor, which is punishable by a $5,000 fine, up to a year in jail or both.

“I can’t believe it,” said Suthard, a disabled veteran. “This is incredibly stressful.”

Alexandra Niewijk Suthard was cited by Honolulu police while walking her dog, Kiba, in Kahala.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Suthard got snagged in a set of restrictions approved by Mayor Kirk Caldwell and Gov. David Ige that experts say disregard the consensus of public health professionals: that outdoors is lower risk, and indoors is higher risk. 

Oahu’s emergency order, effective through Sept. 16, flips health experts’ advice on its head.

Taxpayer-funded outdoor spaces – beaches, parks and hiking trails – are shut down. But indoor businesses including retail stores, restaurants, gyms, tattoo shops and massage parlors that provide more person-to-person contact and less ventilation are open, albeit with restrictions.

That’s despite the fact that the state has offered no evidence showing parks are driving COVID-19 spread. Hawaii’s Department of Health has identified COVID-19 clusters in gyms, restaurants and other indoor operations but Director Bruce Anderson couldn’t point to a single known cluster recently from a beach party. 

The state’s own assessment of the COVID-19 situation in Hawaii highlights the risks of gyms and indoor gatherings but makes no mention of potential threats in parks or hiking trails. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s top health protection agency, recommends keeping green spaces open during the pandemic to protect the public’s physical and mental health. 

“These bogus citations, which have nothing to do with the intent of the emergency order, cause individuals significant stress and confusion and animosity towards our leadership,” Suthard said.

Harvard epidemiologist Julia Marcus says Honolulu’s rules don’t make scientific sense.

Courtesy of Julia Marcus

Julia Marcus, an infectious disease epidemiologist and professor at Harvard Medical School, said she stared at a summary of Honolulu’s rules “in disbelief.” Indoor businesses can operate safely if proper procedures are followed, Marcus said, but it makes no sense to close public outdoor spaces.

“To me, this seems very misguided,” she said. “Based on what we know about superspreader events globally, they’re not happening at the beach. It’s not zero risk, but that’s not where most or even much transmission – if any – is happening.”

Caldwell has said he wanted to crack down on large gatherings at the island’s beach parks, and closing them down makes it easier to enforce.

“We’re trying to take a bright line on these things, and sometimes people don’t quite understand why, and we can understand that too,” he said at a recent press conference. “We believe holding this line is important to reduce the number of cases on Oahu.”

But his rules are likely driving people to gather indoors, Marcus said, which is riskier because it provides less ventilation to disperse viral particles.

Plus, there’s an equity issue, Marcus said. While free outdoor spaces are closed, open-air operations that require an entrance fee are open, including the city zoo, the Wet ‘n’ Wild Hawaii water park, the Aloha Stadium swap meet, golf courses, Kualoa Ranch and Waimea Valley.

“You’re depriving more economically disadvantaged people of outdoor space where they can recreate, socialize safely, exercise, enjoy their lives,” she said.

“We need to be thinking of this pandemic in a sustainable way, and shutting down outdoor spaces is not a sustainable or scientific approach and in some cases comes more from moral judgment about people gathering in ways that seem to be frivolous but in fact are probably quite low-risk.”

“When officials are overly heavy-handed in their public health restrictions and, worse, not evidence-based, people will lose trust.” — Harvard epidemiologist Julia Marcus

Nationwide, politicians and citizens have made a point of shaming people for having fun outdoors even if they are keeping their distance from non-household members, Marcus said.

Media outlets are to blame too, according to the University of North Carolina sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. In a weekslong Twitter thread, she has repeatedly pointed out that news organizations often illustrate their pandemic-related articles with photos of bikini-clad beachgoers even when outbreaks are actually happening in food processing plants and prisons. It amounts to misinformation, Tufekci wrote in The Atlantic.

“Enough with the beach-scolding!” she tweeted. “It’s a virus — not a moral agent geared to smite people who dare enjoy themselves. Six months in, we *know* most risk is indoors. More knowledge, less baseless outrage.”

Living In A ‘Police State’

The contradictions in Honolulu’s order have led some to question leaders’ rationale.

“I feel the decisions being made are more political and financial in nature than based on science,” said Andrew Grandinetti, a Hawaii epidemiologist who studies chronic diseases. 

Caldwell declined to be interviewed for this story. But at a press conference last week, he vehemently defended his order and said he was protecting public health.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said his order was not designed with business interests in mind.

“We’re doing this for health reasons, to protect the health and safety of the people of Oahu,” he said. “To think that we’re taking action based on business reasons is so far left field.”

He reiterated that officials are trying to control “unregulated, large outdoor gatherings.”

“Where there’s gatherings outdoors, where there’s no regulation in place, we’ve shut those down to try to prevent further community spread,” he said.

But that explanation is baffling to residents who have been cited by Honolulu police officers. The department recently established a “COVID enforcement team” of 160 sworn police officers whose overtime is being paid by federal CARES Act funds.

In a single weekend this month, officers issued 1,350 citations, mostly to people allegedly lingering in closed parks or beaches. The department has also set up a phone number and email for residents to report others’ misbehavior.

“It’s a police state we’re living in subject to the rulemaking of one man,” Mililani resident Dana Lee wrote to Civil Beat.

Lee reported that a parks department employee recently called the police on her and her 5-year-old son for being in a public park, even though no one else was around. She just wanted him to get a little exercise, she said.

HPD is bolstered by federal funds to enforce the mayor’s emergency order.

Claire Caulfield/Civil Beat

“The more the government tries to control normal human behavior in unjustifiable and confusing ways, the more panic and frustration they are injecting into the community,” she said.

Many people have wondered why HPD couldn’t just cite large groups that are not in compliance while keeping beaches and parks open for others.

With a strong communications campaign that clearly outlines what not to do, people should be able to enjoy the outdoors safely, said William Miller, an epidemiologist at Ohio State University’s College of Public Health.

“I would hope there would be a way, through communication and enforcement, to not restrict it for everywhere,” he said.

HPD Chief Susan Ballard was not available for an interview for this story, a department spokeswoman said.

Miller said he has a motto for assessing the risk of an activity: “Time, space, people, place – and remember your face.”

“Time” is the duration you’re with someone in close proximity. “Space” is maintaining 6 feet of distance. “People” means only interacting with your household or closed network. “Place” is choosing outdoor over indoor activities. And “face” is a reminder to wear a mask.

Honolulu’s order is inconsistent with that guidance, Miller said.

“The outdoors is one of our safer places to be, and my fear when you do such a strong lockdown is it tends to make people not follow through on some of the other things that are more important,” he said. “People will get frustrated and start having their own parties at their house, things that no one will be able to control. It can be a disincentive.” 

It’s for exactly that reason that Oahu’s emergency order could backfire, according to Marcus. Beyond wasting resources on policing low-risk parks and beaches, which Marcus called a “distraction,” Honolulu also risks losing the thing it needs most of all.

“Trust is the foundation of an effective public health response,” she said. “When officials are overly heavy-handed in their public health restrictions and, worse, not evidence-based, people will lose trust.”

The post Beaches, Parks, Trails Closed? Honolulu Mayor’s COVID-19 Rules Defy Science, Experts Say appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

In the race for Honolulu prosecutor, former judge Steve Alm is campaigning as a trustworthy and experienced probation advocate while his opponent, attorney Megan Kau, is promising a tough, by-the-book approach that she acknowledged could increase the prison population.

The candidates faced off on Monday for the first time since the primary in a forum hosted by the Kokua Council, a nonprofit that advocates for kupuna.

Alm, who worked over 30 years as a prosecutor and judge, said while his opponent is passionate, he is the one with a record of proven leadership.

“If she wants to apply as a deputy prosecutor, I would consider any application for that,” he said.

Megan Kau and Steve Alm are in a run-off for Honolulu prosecutor on the November ballot.

The candidates are running to replace Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro, who has been on paid leave for a year and a half after being notified he is the target of an FBI investigation. Alm and Kau were the top vote getters in the August primary, fending off progressive reformer Jacquie Esser, Acting Prosecutor Dwight Nadamoto and others.

Kau, a prominent defense attorney, is pitching voters an “objective yet aggressive” strategy. Her plan is to charge crimes of all levels strictly as the law allows – no more, no less. The current administration is failing to charge low-level crimes, according to Kau, and she argues that allows for more serious and violent offenses to occur later.

If under her approach more people will end up behind bars in Hawaii’s crowded prisons, so be it, Kau said. Her philosophy is that the prosecutor must enforce the law as written.

“The Department of Public Safety has to step up and the prosecutor has to educate the Legislature on providing more treatment,” she said.

Even as the prison system is releasing inmates to reduce crowding because of COVID-19, Kau said she would not slow down prosecutions. The state would just need to find additional venues to house prisoners, she said.

Alm believes there is more discretion in the job. He said he would focus his office’s resources on the “highest risk defendants” and try to keep low-level offenders out of prison. He said he would support an alternative to cash bail because it creates inequities between the rich and the poor. However, he said he doesn’t see that change happening anytime soon.

The architect of HOPE probation, a program through which defendants face escalating penalties for bad behavior, Alm is an advocate of treatment and supervision more than incarceration.

Alm, a former Honolulu and federal prosecutor, also said he would use the pandemic, when jury trials are on hold, to host training for deputy prosecutors.

“That’s what leadership is,” he said. “You don’t just react to things. You’re proactive.”

Kau said she is best positioned to root out corruption in the office because she has assisted the federal investigators who convicted former Deputy Prosecutor Katherine Kealoha. A former deputy prosecutor herself, Kau said Kealoha was her supervisor briefly before Kau was “forced to resign” within three months of Kaneshiro taking office.

Alm said he is the best candidate to restore trust in the office because of his decades of experience. He pointed to his endorsement from the police union as evidence of his standing among law enforcement. 

“The police know they’re going get a tough prosecutor with me,” he said. “And they respect that.” 

During the forum, the candidates took some jabs at each other. More than once, Kau referred to Alm as “out of touch,” pointing out that he hasn’t been the prosecutor in a trial in nearly 20 years.

“He’s not relevant at this time,” she said. “Things have changed.”

Alm countered that his last trial was eight years ago when he was a judge.

Kau also said that HOPE probation doesn’t work because it gives offenders too many opportunities to mess up.

“The criminals know they can get around the system,” she said. 

Alm pointed to a 2010 study by Pepperdine University and UCLA that shows HOPE probationers were 55% less likely to be arrested for a new crime.

“Do you really want to send someone to prison for five years for testing positive for meth a couple times? No,” he said.

Versions of HOPE have been replicated in 33 states and Guam, Alm said. While it did show early promise locally, more recent studies in other places have raised serious doubt about its efficacy. Alm continues to preach the HOPE gospel, however, in a case of what one group of professors called “ignoring bad news.”

Alm said he has the “stature” to work hand in hand with other government officials like the Honolulu police chief, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney.

“Who can relate to them as a peer?” he asked. “Who has gone to the City Council and has their respect?”

The post Alm To Kau: Ask Me For A Job When I’m Elected Prosecutor appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

Many Honolulu businesses will be required to close again as they were in early March as the island ramps up testing, contact tracing and quarantine efforts with the help of the federal government.

The new emergency order will take effect at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday and will last for two weeks, Mayor Kirk Caldwell said. It comes as there are 4,472 active COVID-19 cases on Oahu, according to Lt. Gov. Josh Green, making up most of the cases statewide.

Parks, beaches and trails will remain closed and commercial operations like hair salons, dine-in restaurants and gyms will also be shut down. Restaurants can offer takeout, the mayor said. Essential businesses like grocery stores and child care providers may continue to operate, Caldwell said, as well as religious services.

Honolulu hopes to test an additional 5,000 people per day.

Ronen Zilberman/Civil Beat

Flanked by U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams and Gov. David Ige, Caldwell announced Oahu will also undergo a three-part intervention.

It will include “surge testing” of 60,000 people in the next two weeks, the hiring of 250 to 500 new contact tracers to boost Hawaii health department efforts and contracting for 130 more local hotel rooms to allow infected members of large families, particularly in the Pacific Islander and Filipino communities, to isolate and quarantine away from their families. With this expanded capacity, there will be more than 300 rooms available in Honolulu.

The federal government will pay for the testing, the state will cover the contact tracing and the city is paying for the hotel.

Officials hope these efforts, combined with continued mask use, hand-washing and limitations on gatherings, will help reduce the number of cases in Honolulu. The island had 215 new cases as of Tuesday, contributing to a total of nearly 7,000.

“We can get through this,” Caldwell said. “We can do this. We did it once. We can do it again and when we reopen it’ll be different than the first time.”

Amid surging cases last week, Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, contacted the city asking how the feds could help, according to the mayor’s office.

“They stood up, and they responded,” the mayor said. “(The Surgeon General) is committed to Oahu for the next couple days to help us.” 

Caldwell’s office did not immediately provide a written copy of the order, which does not impact the neighbor islands.

Also on Tuesday, the city announced that starting on Sept. 1, it will require all riders of TheBus and TheHandi-Van to wear a mask or face covering over the nose and mouth, when boarding and for the duration of their ride. There will be no exceptions to the “no mask, no ride” rule.

‘We Want Everyone To Get Tested’

Regarding testing, the goal is to test 5,000 people per day on top of the Department of Health’s testing efforts, which Ige said have totaled between 1,000 to 2,000 tests per day. 

“The whole point of the surge testing is so anyone for any reason can get tested,” Adams said. “We want to get a handle on who’s got it and who doesn’t. You do not need a doctor’s order. You do not need any money. It’s free. We want everyone to get tested.”

Surgeon General Jerome Adams is visiting Honolulu to offer federal support to the island’s COVID-19 response.

Courtesy: City and County of Honolulu

Adams said people should seek a test even if they were tested and found to be negative previously. The test, as demonstrated by Adams during a press conference, involves the patient self-swabbing each of their nostrils and dropping the specimen in a tube – not the insertion of a long brush into the nasal cavity by a healthcare professional.

The test is easy and painless, Adams said, and patients should get results in two to three days with the help of labs outside of Hawaii. Patients will be asked for their name, phone number and email address so they can receive their results.

“Please get tested over the next two weeks,” he said. “Make sure you know your status. Make sure you know the status of the people who you live, work, learn and pray with, and encourage them to get tested.”

Honolulu’s announcement follows other temporary surge testing efforts in COVID-19 hot spots throughout the country including Jacksonville, Florida; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Edinburg, Texas, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

To pull it off, DHHS partnered with eTrueNorth, a small Texas company that was awarded $90 million in federal contracts to help oversee more than 350 testing sites, according to the health news site Stat. 

“The federal program won’t replace other state and local sites, but it will help boost testing in cities with high rates of new cases and help diagnose people who are asymptomatic,” NBC News reported in July.

The free testing was “offered” to the Department of Public Safety for Oahu’s prisoners but officials are “still working on logistics to see if it is possible,” according to Caldwell Communications Director Alexander Zannes.

Currently, Oahu is at a medium, or “yellow,” threat level, meaning positive cases make up from five to 10% of tests, Adams said. Officials are trying to prevent the island from going into the “red,” in which positive cases are over 10% of those tested.

New York now has a positivity rate of less than 1%, Adams said.

“And they’ve done it without a vaccine, they’ve done it without any miracle drugs,” he said. “They’ve done it with the 3 W’s: washing your hands, wearing a mask, and watching your distance along with making sure people are tested so that they know their status and they can behave appropriately.”

Green said the Pacific Islander community has been hit especially hard. The group makes up only 4% of the population but 30% of COVID-19 cases.

“An order to stay at home will keep people alive,” Green said.

The surge testing is set to begin on Wednesday, Aug. 26 at Kaneohe District Park and Leeward Community College. It will be a drive-through operation run in part by the Honolulu Fire Department’s All Hazards Incident Management Team and will run at various locations for 12 consecutive days. Officials are encouraging Honolulu residents to visit www.doineedacovid19test.com to find a testing location and register for an appointment.

Honolulu will be spreading the word about testing through news outlets and social media, Zannes said.

For people who need to isolate, Caldwell said the city has retained an entire 130-room hotel and is looking to contract with more. This is being paid for with federal grant funds, according to a press release from Ige’s office.

Caldwell did not identify the hotel currently under contract, stating anonymity is part of their agreement. As Caldwell described it, the program allows people who test positive to avoid exposing other members of their household, and also to prevent those household members from further spreading the virus with their own contacts.

Eddie Mersereau, deputy director of the DOH’s Behavioral Health Administration, said isolation hotel workers will be trained in infection control procedures. 

The mayor’s office said the city is working in coordination with DOH to “determine a pool of candidates” for the contact tracing jobs. Brigadier General Kenneth Hara and the National Guard are running point on the contact tracing, the mayor’s office said.

Previous Response Was Not ‘Equitable,’ Councilman Says

At the press conference, City Councilman Joey Manahan, a Filipino American who represents Kalihi and Iwilei, criticized state failures that necessitated the feds stepping in.

He said the state failed to test and trace COVID-19 adequately “while the curve was flat,” and now the pandemic is stressing the health care system and the economy. He also called the Department of Health out on its refusal to accept the city’s help early on when it wanted to provide testing through community health centers.

“The DOH tied the city’s hands when we offered to test communities on the front line of the pandemic back in April,” he said.

The result has been a testing scheme that “has not been equitable,” Manahan said.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the White House reached out to Honolulu to ask how the federal government could help Oahu.

Courtesy: City and County of Honolulu

“The state’s decision to coordinate testing with hospitals only is proving costly for our working families who access their health care at a federally qualified community health center,” he said.

“Until now, there has been no plan of action from the state or guidance for residents of public housing, with regards to the cases that are proliferating inside. The same can be said for guards and inmates inside our prison system.”

He added that his district and the island, in general, haven’t felt relief from the Department of Health’s deployment of CARES Act money for testing and contact tracing.

“So, that said, and I’m not trying to blame anybody, I’m glad that the federal government and the county are stepping in to provide more social justice and equity in the current testing and tracing programs,” he said. “This is welcome news, not just for me in my district but really for the county of Oahu and for the state of Hawaii.”

The city’s own response to the pandemic has also been criticized.

The decision by Caldwell and Ige to shut down public parks, beaches and trails earlier this month while leaving open private outdoor spaces and indoor businesses like gyms angered many city residents. It also baffled epidemiologists who said the decision was not based on science. Studies show COVID-19 risk is much higher indoors than it is outdoors.

The move caused confusion and frustration among residents who have reported being issued criminal citations for walking alone through empty parks. It also got the attention of the New York Times and FOX News commentator Laura Ingraham. 

Nevertheless, Caldwell stood by his decision on Tuesday to continue to keep parks, beaches and trails closed.

“It’s all about trying to control how people gather,” he said.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday morning, well over a dozen Honolulu police officers were gathered in Kapiolani Park for an apparent training exercise, according to a photo snapped by Hunter Heaivillin, who chairs the executive committee of Sierra Club’s Oahu group.

Caldwell indicated that gathering was fine because he “can’t think of a more essential group.” 

And the award for largest gathering I’ve seen in a park in months goes to… @honolulupolice!

It was easy enough for me to spot this large gathering, I’d think @MayorKirkHNL’s officers are more than capable of doing the same and distinguishing between small & big groups

1/4 pic.twitter.com/VQ3Bf7tXBl

— Hunter Heaivilin (@supersistence) August 25, 2020

The post Oahu Goes Back To Stay-At-Home Order While Virus Testing Ramps Up appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The City and County of Honolulu is planning to hire between 250 and 500 contact tracers to supplement state efforts to tamp down COVID-19 on Oahu.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said on Wednesday that those tracers would add to 10 positions the Department of Health approved last week to trace the virus among city employees and their contacts. He plans to use CARES Act money to make it happen. He didn’t say how much it would cost but said the tracers would be making “a living wage.”

The additional tracers would feed information into the state’s system “so we know where the virus is and what we need to do,” the mayor said.

A population of Oahu’s size calls for 350 to 450 contact tracers, the mayor said. For the state, he said it should be around 500.

“We’re nowhere near that,” he said. “And we do need to build our capacity. We want to be part of the solution. We don’t want to complain or blame at this point. It’s: What do we do?”

Mayor Kirk Caldwell and U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams teamed up to provide surge testing on Oahu.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Caldwell said that his administration would send a letter asking the state for approval for the hires. However, DOH spokeswoman Janice Okubo said on Wednesday afternoon that the city doesn’t require the state’s permission.

“The DOH does not need to approve Honolulu’s request,” she wrote in an email, adding that DOH just asked that the city coordinate its contact tracing activities with the DOH.

Caldwell is taking contact tracing into his own hands after months of lamenting a lack of action by the state. Honolulu doesn’t typically engage in health-related matters because it doesn’t have a health department.

The mayor didn’t specify what he envisioned for the hiring process for the contact tracers. The University of Hawaii has already trained people on how to be contact tracers, but the mayor said many of those trainees only want to work part-time.

“For us, we need a more aggressive team of people,” he said.

He said he has considered the idea of working with established call centers, like those that do polling.

“We’re going to explore all options to expand this capacity,” he said. “Every contact tracer we get is one step to a different outcome than what we’ve had in the past.”

The city’s contact tracers would either work under the newly established Office of Economic Revitalization or with Emergency Medical Services’ Jill Omori, the city’s infectious disease officer, and city physician Melanie Lee, according to Caldwell’s communications director Alexander Zannes. Either way, the city would still be working in coordination with the Hawaii Department of Health, he said.

“The logistics are not definitive at this point,” he said.

Tracing Will Accompany Testing

As of now, the state will be handling the contact tracing for positive cases that emerge through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services surge testing program, Zannes said.

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams demonstrated the COVID-19 nasal swab test available for free in Honolulu.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

On Wednesday, DHSS’s drive-thru surge testing kicked off at Leeward Community College and in Kaneohe where cars were lined up in traffic, sometimes for over an hour. The mayor acknowledged “we need to do a better job of traffic flow.”

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who is overseeing the operation, said it will continue running for “at least 14 days.” There is capacity to provide up to 5,000 tests per day for free, officials said.

Officials are encouraging Honolulu residents to visit www.doineedacovid19test.com to find a testing location and register for an appointment.

Patients are instructed to self-swab and hand their sample to a health care worker on site. The specimens are being sent to FDA-approved labs in California and patients are expected to receive results via email within three days, Adams said. The so-called “PCR test” has an over 90% accuracy rate, according to Adams.

While new guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that tests are not needed for those who don’t have symptoms, Adams is encouraging everyone on Oahu to get tested.

“There is a lot of misinformation out there about what the CDC put out,” Adams said.

He said the CDC’s recommendation merely means to prioritize those with symptoms. However, in a place with escalating case numbers like Honolulu, he is urging widespread testing.

Islandwide Shutdown Returns

As of 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, Oahu’s latest Stay at Home, Work From Home order goes into effect. It mandates the shutdown provisions that were in place in March with nonessential businesses ordered to close. Restaurants can only provide takeout. Grocery stores will remain open, as will in-person religious services.

“With all the measures we’ve taken, and all the pain and suffering that we’ve created, we have not seen the results we hoped for,” Caldwell said. “And for me, and I’m not a doctor, I think it confirms the spread of this disease throughout our community. It’s everywhere, in our homes as well as our workplaces. And so it’s going to take a little longer to tamp it down.”

Mayor Kirk Caldwell is not budging on his shutdown order, despite frustration from residents.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

In the next two weeks, if case numbers drop, the mayor said he would look to reopen things again, including exercise in parks. Under the current order and continuing through the new one, parks, beaches and hiking trails are closed. That’s despite scientific evidence showing green spaces are relatively safe places during the pandemic and can help boost physical and mental health.

Despite major blowback from the community, the mayor is not backing down.

“It’s very difficult to break up a large group of people,” Caldwell said.

“We opened up parks, and it got out of hand over time. You would go to the beach, you would see people all over the place, in large groups, under tents, close together. I believe it would’ve been an impossible situation to break up those groups at that point. So shutting down everything is a way to reset, so when we open up, we don’t go back to large groups again. I can promise you, as mayor, we are not going to allow that to happen.”

Caldwell said he might require permits for tents at beach parks that would allow police to arrest the permittee if too many people crowd under it.

Regarding residents who were angered after receiving criminal citations for seemingly benign activities, the mayor said the city is doing what is necessary.

“Let’s say we did nothing, and people walk into parks, and more people walk into the parks, and they didn’t enforce. You have 100 people gathering in a park, and you have the virus spread. What happens in a park, they take home,” he said.

Caldwell suggested that people might say “‘I was only walking my dog.’ Someone else is going to say ‘I did this, I did that.’ What are the police officers supposed to do? How do they pick and choose? Then someone writes a story that they’re racial profiling because they’re citing certain people and not others. So bright line, everyone gets cited, no matter who you are, your age, your race, your religion, your orientation, you’re all cited.”

Despite Caldwell announcing the order as a done deal on Tuesday, Gov. David Ige delayed approval of the order until Wednesday afternoon.

The city and state had a disagreement over how long it should last, according to Caldwell – a delay he called “not necessary.” The DOH wanted it to be 28 days. The mayor wanted it to be two weeks.

In the end, Ige agreed to two weeks. The mayor said he hopes that’s all it takes.

“Just like the surgeon general, I am hopeful that this extraordinary measure we’re taking will result in a better outcome because it worked once before, back in March,” he said. “So, I believe it will work again.”

The post Honolulu Is Taking Contact Tracing Into Its Own Hands appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

In May, Honolulu pledged up to $1,500 a month to residents who needed help with rent, utility payments and child care costs during the pandemic.

Mayor Kirk Caldwell allocated $25 million from the federal CARES Act for the Household Hardship Relief Fund. But more than three months later, only about $2.1 million has been distributed, his office said on Thursday.

That’s 8.4%.

Overly burdensome application requirements have blocked residents from obtaining the assistance they desperately need, according to Aloha United Way, which is helping distribute the money.

“The level of bureaucracy involved in processing applications is grinding the process to a halt for hundreds of applicants,” said Lisa Kimura, AUW’s vice president of community impact. 

Mayor Kirk Caldwell said the city recognizes the problems with the hardship relief fund and is working to get more money out more quickly to those in need.

Courtesy: City and County of Honolulu

If the money isn’t distributed by the end of the year, the city will have to spend it elsewhere or give it back to the feds. 

Honolulu’s interpretation of the federal constraints on the funding is requiring applicants to hand over paperwork that is often difficult or impossible to obtain, Kimura said.

For example, some employers have cut employee hours to zero, but the worker is still technically employed. The city’s application requires an unemployment insurance certification or verification letter.

It also requires bank statements. But thousands of Honolulu households don’t have bank accounts, according to a 2017 federal government survey.

The city also requires “proof of liquid assets” for every adult in the household, according to Kimura, and that can be an obstacle if some household members are uncooperative or unable to produce the records. 

“If you’re a single adult who has a formal termination notice and access to a bank statement, you’re probably in good shape,” she said. “If you have any variation of that, not so much. The bigger the household, the more complexity to their financial situation, the more time consuming it is to process.”

Additional challenges exist when applicants don’t have internet or have language barriers, said Susan Furuta, president and chief executive officer of Helping Hands Hawaii, one of the city’s contracted fund distributors.

Service providers don’t have the authority to waive requirements and need to operate by the book for future audits, Kimura said. And even for people are who approved, Kimura said the city requires that they be recertified monthly. 

Honolulu is trying so hard to prevent fraud and waste that the money is not getting to where it needs to go, according to Kimura. 

“The city doesn’t want to be left on the hook just as much as we don’t if money gets distributed that shouldn’t have been,” she said. “So instead of taking more aggressive approach to distribution, it’s overly burdensome documentation.”

AUW is spending hours trying to process single applications, and the nonprofit is losing money in the process, Kimura said. It subcontracted with other nonprofit partners to take on this task, Kimura said, but half of them have dropped out because they couldn’t afford to continue. 

“This has been just the biggest runaround ever. I’m stuck, and I’m shocked at how little help there is.” Applicant Krista Vessell

Kimura said the city should allow people to receive at least three months of assistance up front. That would cut down on processing time and reduce the workflow for service providers, she said.

It would also help if applicants could “self-certify” that they are experiencing a pandemic-related hardship. Having them sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury would provide a safeguard while cutting down on paperwork, Kimura said.

“This is not an unheard-of process,” she said. “It happens in many different ways with other government programs.” 

At a press conference on Wednesday, Caldwell acknowledged paperwork has been an obstacle and said the city is considering issuing cards, similar to debit cards.

“I hope that we can break this logjam to get more money out to individuals along with businesses,” he said.

In a written statement, Community Services Director Pam Witty-Oakland said many of the program’s applicants “require significant case management and processing” to complete an application, and the city’s nonprofit partners have had to hire dozens of new staff and provide on-the-job training.

The help can’t come soon enough.

Makiki resident Krista Vessell, 36, said she applied for help right after applications opened in May. A former teller at a local credit union, she said she was forced to leave her job because of anxiety and the need to look after her children at home. The mother of three said her family is living off her disabled husband’s social security check, about $1,700 a month.

To this day, she said, she hasn’t received a dollar of help from the Hardship Relief Fund. That’s despite many phone calls, repeated sharing of documents and AUW’s assurances that her application was sufficient, she said.

“This has been just the biggest runaround ever,” she said. “I’m stuck, and I’m shocked at how little help there is.”

The threat of the electricity being turned off or facing eviction is causing Vessell severe anxiety. She was homeless before and said she is “really scared” it could happen again.

Honolulu was quick to start up a profoundly needed program, but the delays in distributing the funds are a huge concern, said Gavin Thornton, executive director of the Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. 

“Many tenants who have lost employment are struggling to pay their rent, especially after the loss of the $600 per week federal boost to unemployment last month,” he said in an email. “And if tenants can’t pay their rent, landlords struggle to pay their mortgage. The consequences reverberate throughout our entire community.”

The post Payments From Honolulu’s $25 Million Hardship Fund Are Mired In Red Tape appeared first on Honolulu Civil Beat.

The city and the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation have again delayed awarding an all-important contract for a multi-billion-dollar segment of the 20-mile rail line from East Kapolei to Ala Moana Center.

The HART board of directors also announced Thursday that the completion date for the full rail line has been pushed back slightly.

If it is ever finally awarded — this is the sixth delay — the public-private partnership or P3 agreement will be the largest contract in city history. But the complex procurement process requires the chief procurement officers for the city and the rail authority to agree on the outcome, including who will get the contract.

Details of the procurement process have been a closely guarded secret, with the rail authority even refusing to make public the exact specifications that the bidders must meet.

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation again delayed awarding a critical segment of the project.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

In general, the contract would involve an estimated $1.4 billion in construction work including 4.1 miles of elevated rail line and eight train stations in the urban core between Middle Street and Ala Moana. The construction piece of the contract is also supposed to include a Pearl Highlands transit center and a 1,600-stall parking garage.

The winning P3 bidder would also get the job of maintaining and operating the entire 20-mile rail line for 30 years. That is expected to cost the city on the order of $140 million a year from the time the entire rail line is scheduled to open in 2026, and the cost will increase in increments from there. That portion of the contract is expected to cost the city at least $4 billion.

The city originally planned to award the P3 contract last September, but repeatedly had to move that award date back. Most recently, the companies competing for the contract told the city they needed more time because the pandemic interfered with their ability to get cost information from suppliers and subcontractors that was needed to prepare their proposals.

Thursday was the most recent award date announced by HART that has come and gone.

At least two companies or conglomerates submitted bids on July 23 to compete for the contract, but they have not been identified publicly. HART reported Thursday that the panel tasked with evaluating the proposals from those entities has produced a report on its findings.

Andrew Robbins, who is executive director and chief procurement officer for HART, said it now falls to him and his counterpart with the city to decide “what the next steps are from that point.” Robbins said he is working with the acting city director of the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services on the selection, Manuel Valbuena.

“The process sucks.” — Honolulu City Council Chair Ikaika Anderson

But having the chief procurement officers for HART and the city exclusively control the award of such a huge contract does not sit well with some. The procurement process does not give the HART board of directors or the Honolulu City Council veto power over the contract, which has drawn criticism from some observers.

HART Vice Chairman Terrence Lee noted there have been press reports that have been demanding that the board have oversight over the P3 award. He said it appears that is not possible given how the procurement code has been interpreted by the relevant agencies and the legal counsel to the board, putting the directors “in a tough spot because the public expects us to have this oversight” but the agency doesn’t.

“As a matter of law, we cannot have that oversight,” Lee said. “We, like the rest of the public, are in the dark as to what considerations, what’s being proposed, the amounts, all that stuff until after the contract is awarded.”

The board went into a lengthy closed-door executive session to discuss the procurement process shortly after Lee made those remarks.

One of the critics of the process is outgoing City Council Chairman Ikaika Anderson, who said in an interview that the council has asked for details about the solicitation for the P3 contract, and been provided with only limited information.

“The process sucks,” Anderson said. “It’s not so much leaving the council out, it leaves the public out.

“I don’t really look at this as an insult to the council at all, but it’s not fair to the taxpayer who’s paying for the project. That’s really why I say the process sucks,” he said.

Robbins also announced Thursday that HART is now forecasting the full rail line will be completed April 17, 2026, which is about a month later than the most recent public estimate. The latest delay was caused by difficulties with a project to relocate utilities such as electrical and water lines out of the way of rail line construction, he said.

The actual, final construction schedule will be set once the new P3 partner is selected and the city has input from the new contractor, Robbins said.

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Efforts to use sewage as an affordable early warning indicator for COVID-19 infections are being delayed because the Department of Health won’t share information with the University of Hawaii and the City and County of Honolulu.

“We want to get more data from DOH to help us validate our model and it has not been easy,” said Tao Yan, a civil and environmental engineering professor from the University of Hawaii who oversees the wastewater testing lab.

The Department of Health did not respond to multiple interview requests. DOH’s lack of transparency has also been criticized by the Hawaii State Auditor, state lawmakers, the lieutenant governor, a member of Hawaii’s congressional delegation and the public.

Honolulu is one of many municipalities across the world that is testing sewage for traces of the virus. Experts are still working to understand how the novel coronavirus behaves in different scenarios, but testing sewage shows promise as a cost-effective indicator of how widespread the virus is in a large community and as a way to identify areas where people are sick before they show symptoms.

The University of Hawaii has been testing nine samples, one from every public wastewater treatment plant on Oahu, for 10 weeks now and the virus has been detected in almost every sample. These preliminary results aren’t surprising to experts because the number of confirmed cases has been climbing for weeks.

But Yan said his team cannot determine if its data is accurate if it can’t compare wastewater results to results from nasal swabs, which are collected by DOH.

“We’ve only been given aggregate data and we want results from specific zip codes around the sewage treatment plants,” Yan said.

Josh Stanbro, Honolulu’s chief resilience officer, said DOH has not told him why it won’t share the zip code data. Stanbro has been working with other municipalities around the country who are also testing wastewater, and analyzing zip code data from nasal swabs has been key for those municipalities to validate their wastewater data.

“This is not something that is unique to here,” he said.

Yan and Stanbro said until they get the zip code data, they can’t release information about the amount of the virus found at certain wastewater treatment plants because the analysis could be incorrect or misleading.

“This should be a team approach because we’re all fighting the same virus.” – Bill Hicks, Kailua Neighborhood Board member

When the City and County of Honolulu joined an international movement to test sewage for COVID-19 in May, it hoped to make the data available on its COVID-19 website and use it to promptly warn communities about outbreaks. Scientists say the virus can often be detected in a person’s feces days before they start showing symptoms.

A robust sewage treatment program could guide public health workers to areas of the island where people are infected but have not started showing symptoms yet, Stanbro said.

That program was initially delayed because BioBot, the company originally analyzing Honolulu’s sewage, was experiencing a major backlog. The county sent in four weeks of samples on May 1, but didn’t get the results back for weeks.

“That defeats the whole purpose of testing the sewage,” Stanbro said at the time.

In June Honolulu reached a deal with the University of Hawaii to test and analyze sewage for $300 a sample. The county has spent about $27,000 in federal funds on the program since partnering with UH.

“$300 per test to monitor a population of several hundred thousand is the cheapest and most effective way to monitor the entire island,” Stanbro said. “If we can get the science right.”

If Yan’s team can get the science right Stanbro said dorms, prisons and senior care facilities could easily monitor the health of their communities.

“The best application of this technology would be for congregate living,” he said. “Instead of having to test everybody all the time with very expensive individual tests, you could test the wastewater inexpensively.”

Data from the testing surge would help Yan’s team calibrate its wastewater analysis.

Cory Lum/Civil Beat

Yan said his lab has been consistently returning results within three days. Workers from the Department of Environmental Services drop off samples on Monday afternoon and the UH lab sends results to the county on Thursday morning.

Yan’s team is using three different processes to measure the amount of the virus in the samples. The different processes give different results. Yan said if he could compare the wastewater results against granular zip code data from DOH, it would be easier for his team to determine which testing process is most accurate for the island.

Adding to the challenge are new discoveries about how the amount of the virus an infected person sheds in their feces changes over time.

“That seems to be the hallmark of this virus: as we know more, we know less.” — Tao Yan, UH professor

“It’s really not as straightforward as we thought,” Yan said. “Using the data to achieve early detection is still the goal but we’re not there yet.”

Other labs have been struggling with the same scientific quandaries. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Yan has been working with a group of researchers and universities from around the country to determine the most accurate way forward.

“That seems to be the hallmark of this virus: as we know more, we know less,” he said.

All the uncertainty is frustrating for Bill Hicks, chairman of the Kailua Neighborhood Board.

Hicks started checking the county’s COVID-19 dashboard for information from the Kailua Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant in late July, when Stanbro and Yan originally said the data would be public.

When he couldn’t find results online he reached out to Stanbro, but was disappointed.

“I don’t want to pile onto DOH but the general public is not getting data that we need to make intelligent decisions and keep everyone safe,” he said. “This should be a team approach because we’re all fighting the same virus.”

Stanbro is still holding out hope that DOH will share zip code data. Instead of once a week, the county is considering collecting sewage samples every day during the two week federally-funded testing surge so Yan’s team has more data points and the wastewater analysis can be even more accurate.

“We want to be able to strike an agreement where we can get access to the data and determine once and for all: Does this work?” he said. “If it does great … we’ll use it as a tool. If it doesn’t, we can discontinue it and focus on other areas.”

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It’s shaping up to be a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle: A parade of at least 15 American World War II era aircraft will take to the skies this weekend, and fly low around the coastline of Oahu to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the war.

The aircraft include a B-25 medium bomber of the sort used in the Doolittle Raid, a Wildcat carrier-based fighter plane and two PBY-5 Catalina patrol seaplanes.

The flybys will take place on both Saturday and Sunday, between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. each day. The planes will take off from Wheeler Army Airfield, and from there will fly counterclockwise around Honolulu and the Windward side on Saturday, and around Haleiwa and the Leeward Coast on Sunday.

The planes will be flying near the shore and should be readily visible.

A B-25 medium bomber, shown here on display in Honolulu earlier this week, is just one of at least 15 World War II era aircraft expected to circle Oahu this weekend to commemorate the end of the war, 75 years ago.

Photo: Sgt. Gabriel Davis

The flybys are organized by the federally chartered 75th Commemoration of the End of WWII, and are part of the runup to Sept. 2, when a third flyover will be held and the formal end of the war will be observed on the deck of the battleship Missouri, where the Japanese surrender papers were signed.

The event is an homage to the courage and tenacity of the crews who fought the air war, according to Rod Bengston, director of restoration services at the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum on Ford Island.

Airframes and navigational instruments were much less developed than they are now, he said.  The aircrews were defending the country “over an ocean where if something goes wrong you don’t get back.”

Producing a show like this requires work by specialist mechanics to keep the aging planes safe to fly. Old warbirds were high-maintenance even when they were new, Bengston said.

Now some parts like tires and hoses are hard to find. Some technologies are unfamiliar to modern mechanics, such as 1700 horsepower radial piston engines, or fabric-covered control surfaces. And some replacement parts simply have to be machined from scratch.

The exhibition planes are mostly based on the mainland and were transported here on the deck of the USS Essex, a Navy amphibious assault ship.

The view of Pearl Harbor from the air reminds the flyover pilots of just how dense and chaotic the scene must have been on Dec. 7.

Syd Jones is a pilot of the B-25 medium bomber. He is struck “at how small the area is; your passover time is only a few seconds.”

As a result, it was “a very challenging airspace” for the coordination and maneuvers needed in the Japanese attack, he said.

A Catalina flying boat is delivered to Pearl Harbor by the USS Essex on Aug. 12.

Photo: Seaman Jaimar Carson Bondurant

The planes in the flyby cover a variety of World War II types. They are scheduled in this order:

• Globe Swift. A two-seat sport plane introduced just after the war, in 1946.

• B-25 Mitchell. A twin-engine, twin-tailed, land-based medium bomber. Sixteen of these planes were used in the Doolittle Raid, an early, largely symbolic strike on Japan made to retaliate for the Pearl Harbor attack. These planes flew from the aircraft carrier Hornet in April, 1942, and bombed Tokyo and other sites. Little physical damage was done, but the raid helped restore American morale and a sense of initiative. The planes had to launch 170 miles earlier than planned, because the strike force was spotted by a patrol boat, and as result all of the planes were lost, none reaching their planned destinations in China. Doolittle at first thought he would be court-martialed for the losses; he was instead promoted to brigadier general.

• P-51 Mustang. A long-range bomber escort with an underbelly air scoop, used mainly in the European Theater, and considered by many the best fighter design of the war.

• TBM Avenger. A torpedo bomber with a three-man crew. A young George H.W. Bush was flying one of these when he was shot down in the western Pacific in 1944, and rescued by the submarine Finback. He had named his plane Barbara after his future wife and First Lady.

• Four T-6 Texans. An advanced low-wing training plane, the successor to the older-design Stearman biplane trainer.

A Catalina flying boat cruises above Pearl Harbor.

Photo: Petty Officer 2nd Class Charles Oki

• Two PBY-5 Catalinas. These were high-wing, long-endurance flying boats, used for patrol and early warning in the days before effective radar; dozens of them were destroyed during the attacks on Oahu. Another was lost with all hands in April 1942, when it was returning from a 12-hour patrol at night and in foul weather, mistook the Makapuu lighthouse for the Barbers Point light, and crashed into the hillside. A plaque at the top of the Makapuu trail commemorates this event.

• Two Stearman trainers. A basic biplane training plane for novice pilots, used early in the war, commonly painted yellow.

• T-28 Trojan. A later, postwar training plane.

• F-8 Bearcat. A late-war design, representing the last and highest development of the piston-engined fighter plane.

• Grumman Wildcat. A landmark plane in the history of the Pacific War, because it was the first American design that could hold its own against the Japanese Zero. It was somewhat slower than the Zero, but only by about 13 miles per hour, and was more rugged and performed better at high speeds. Although later replaced by the F-6 Hellcat, it was the Wildcat that held the line and turned the war around for the Americans.

All these planes posed hardships and risks to their wartime crews. Syd Jones, the B-25 pilot, described a long overwater flight such as the Doolittle Raid.

“It’s a very small plane inside … and there is a lot of noise, a low-frequency vibration all through the aircraft that kind of wears you out.”

Which is the sort of endurance being commemorated this weekend.

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