Lethal Reprisals

I am 75 years old. I could soon die of covid-19 or prostate cancer. There are some things I’ve been wanting to get off my chest, so now is a good time, especially in light of the nationwide outrage at police misconduct and brutality. Let’s don’t pretend that Maui is free from such problems, and it’s not just the police. County of Maui is one of the most corrupt and lawless local governments in the country.

Consider the following scenarios. 

1)  I hide a Glock 19 in a holster under my denim jacket. I walk into a Maui County Council meeting on the 7^th floor of the county building on High Street in Wailuku. I don’t have to sneak the gun in since there is no security. People settle in for the day’s business and I sit in the center of the front row. I see that all nine council members are seated at a table on the stage. Just as the meeting is gavelled to order by the council chair. I pull out my gun, stand up and start shooting at the council members. I drop 5 of them before I’m shot. I’m not sure who got me. My world goes dark.

2)  It has taken me several months to arrange an appointment with the mayor, but the time finally arrives. His receptionist tells me I’ll have 15 minutes and ushers me into his office. He rises from his chair behind his large desk, shakes my hand and gestures for me to sit in the chair opposite the desk. We both sit. I start airing some of my grievances. He nods, fakes concern and assures me he’ll “look into it.” I know he won’t do a thing.

I have a memo book on the desk and a little blowgun disguised as a pen in my hand. After about 10 minutes he leans forward with his hands on the desk, preparing to push his chair back and stand up. Now his face is just three feet from mine as I gently tap the pen on my lips. I aim the tip at his open mouth and blow hard. Bulls eye! A small dollop of gel goes right into his mouth. “What the hell….?” He looks dizzy. His head drops to the desk, then he slides to the floor. I rush to the door and summon the receptionist. “Call 911! I think he’s had a stroke or something,” I call out. Within seconds I hear a siren in the distance, but I know it’s too late. He’s swallowed enough Fentanyl to kill ten people. I hang around until the EMT crew arrives, then slip out. I go down the stairs and exit the building as several cops are entering. They don’t notice me.

3) I’m about to pull a Timothy McVeigh, but without hurting anyone. A van packed with an NFO bomb and a ten minute fuse is all it takes. It’s a Saturday about 3 a.m. I pull into the parking area under the building and park midway between four pillars, set the fuse and walk away. I’m long gone when it goes off. The next day I see that the nine-story building buckled in the middle, then crumbled straight down.

4) I find out where a certain Maui police officer lives and watch his house for several days. One night when I’m confident that he is alone in the house I burn it down with him inside. He dies of smoke inhalation.

5) I use a biotoxin to assassinate a prosecutor who repeatedly refused to prosecute thugs who assaulted and battered me.

6) I patiently stalk the county’s corporation counsel and when the opportunity is right I throw powerful sulfuric acid in her face. She will suffer immensely, spend weeks in the hospital undergoing surgery, lose 90% of her vision. 

7) I pull a Ted Kaczynski and send letter bombs to certain county government criminals. When they open them their hands get blown off and they are blinded.

8) I firebomb a health fraud store whose owners had hired a thug to assault me and cause me severe injuries. It’s well past closing time and only the owners are in the store. They are badly burned and will be scarred for life.

I’ve  never been a violent person, so these dreams horrify me. They are recurring nightmares that I have endured for the last decade. I often wake in a cold sweat. I never get enough sleep, so I’m always tired, anxious and depressed. I’ve been in therapy for years, trying to pull out of it. I think about suicide almost every day. I have stockpiled my escape kit of pills and whiskey.  

Why do I have violent nightmares? They are dreams of revenge. The criminals who run this county – the police, prosecutors, mayor, county council members, corporation counsel, et al, have repeatedly brutalized me, and trampled on my constitutional rights and protection under the law. The county and its agents have committed at least a dozen serious crimes against me including unlawful arrests, police brutality, perjury, aiding and abetting criminal acts against me, obstruction of justice, witness tampering and more. They have seriously injured me both physically and emotionally.

First I recount just one example of the county’s crimes against me. It was the first, but far from the worst, which I briefly reference below. I have provided details of all the cases in the blogs www.MauiFascism.blogspot.com, www.SueMauiTyrants.blogspot.com. and www.MoanaLutey.blogspot.com. 

I also wrote a novel inspired by the county’s crimes. It is titled Barbarians in Paradise; Terror Comes to Maui, and is available as a free e-book at www.Smashwords.com. 

The county’s first crime against me was similar to the George Floyd murder and I was lucky that I didn’t get crippled or killed. If I had been, the criminal cops would have paid no price, thanks to “qualified immunity.”

Here is what happened in

The First Case: Cops Nearly Kill Me for Talking Back

There have been times when, because of poor business decisions, I’ve been destitute and I’ve have had to take tough menial jobs. (Nicola Tesla had the same problem. One of the greatest inventors ever, he screwed up business-wise and dug ditches in his sixties.)  This incident occurred during one of those times. After a long day of hard labor washing and moving rental cars, I sat on the steps of the temp agency in the Kahului Shopping Center that had gotten me the day’s job. A senior citizen in my sixties, I was resting, drinking water and filling out my time sheet. The workers always did that. They got dropped off there in the morning and picked up there in the afternoon.

However, this was a Sunday, usually a light day for workers, and I happened to be the only employee there at that time, just as I had been on several previous Sundays without incident. I was going to fill out my time sheet, drop it in the door slot, and rest 10 minutes before walking two more long miles home under the still scorching sun.

Unfortunately a security guard in a pickup truck stopped about 50 feet from me and yelled very rudely that I have to get off the property. I held up my time sheet and pencil, then ignored him. I had legitimate business there and security had seen the temp agency’s workers waiting for rides there on Sundays many times.

Other people were walking around on the property and there weren’t any no-trespassing signs. Besides, I was exhausted and simply couldn’t leave right away. He repeated himself even more rudely. I replied in kind (I think I told him to shut up and leave me alone) and he called the cops.

There is no doubt that the security guard profiled me as a homeless person and therefore, in his mind, a worthless bum. I carried a small backpack, my clothes were wrinkled, I looked tired, sweaty and disheveled, and he probably thought my water bottle, in a thick paper bag to keep it cool, was booze.

If I had looked like a tourist and was staring at a map he surely would have gotten out of his truck, approached me and politely greeted me with something like, “Hello, sir. Can I help you with anything?” But no one on Maui wearing a badge or a security-guard cap ever shows aloha to a homeless person or someone they assume is homeless.

Within minutes three squad cars pulled up and five cops got out, with Officer Rocky Silva in the lead. All of them were 10 to 40 years younger than I and physically fit, except Silva with his pot belly. They approached me in a threatening manner and surrounded me as if I was a dangerous criminal.

Silva got in my face and demanded to know, “Alright, what’s going on here?” I held out my time sheet and pencil, and started to tell him. He cut me off with, “Now you listen to me!” One of his gang bangers said, “We could consider that (my little pencil) a weapon.” They were already preparing an excuse to assault me.

I said to Silva, “No, you listen to me. You asked me a question and I’m going to answer it.” At that he pulled his Taser from his belt and seemed about to use it even though I was just sitting there peacefully.

I said, “What, you’re going to taze me for trying to answer your question? You know, you guys are turning this island into a fascist police state. I want all your names.” I looked at their name tags and started to write, but only got one name half written when they all started pummelling me.

Silva and one of his goons grabbed me, flipped me onto my stomach so I was lying face-down on the stairs, and Silva put all his weight on my back, his knee in the middle of my spine, and my neck pressed onto the edge of a step as he wrenched my arms behind my back and cuffed me. He and his gang said things like, “You can’t insult the department and get away with it.”

One of them got racist and said, “If you don’t like it here, go back where you came from.” I grew up in Maui County (on Molokai) and have lived here most of my life, but since I’m of European descent and I was tired and disheveled, these thugs figured I must be a homeless “haole” bum from the mainland. That made me fair game.

I hate to bring this up because I have so many good friends of Hawaiian, Asian and mixed descent, but if you think Hawaii is a racial paradise, think again and read the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which documents the anti-Caucasian bias pervasive in the islands. I’d be wealthy if I had a dollar for every time I’ve been called a “fucking haole”. Ironically, it comes more from people of Asian descent than Hawaiians even though Caucasians (including Irish like myself) were here long before Asians. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2009/hawaii-suffering-racial-prejudice. 

While Silva held me down the others punched and kicked me all over, including in the head. I thought they were going to kill me. They almost did, and if they had they would have gotten away with it. They would have concocted some preposterous story of the type cops frequently use to get away with murder – perhaps that I’d lunged at them with that deadly weapon, my little stub of a pencil.

Then they arrested me for trespass and resisting arrest even though they never told me I was under arrest and I never resisted anything. Nor had they ordered me off the property or given me a chance to leave. They put the cuffs on tight enough to break the skin and dragged me to a squad car, then threw me in roughly, obviously trying to inflict injury and pain on me.

Now, I admit I was “guilty” of talking back to a Maui cop. To them this is a serious crime, “contempt of cop,” even though no such crime exists in the Hawaii Revised Statutes. In fact the law says that police officers should expect to take some verbal abuse as part of their jobs. For example, people who loudly protest their treatment by police in colorful ways that might otherwise be considered disorderly conduct cannot be so charged.

But the gang bangers with badges make their own laws, and one of them is that any person they choose to hassle for whatever reason must bow down and kiss their asses or risk serious injury and arrest on phony charges.

I was released on bail with a terrible headache that lasted for days and back pain that would last for years. I finally went to the emergency room of the local hospital and was diagnosed with a concussion. I still had painful bruises on my body and lumps on my head.

In subsequent months I suffered several TIAs (mini-strokes) that were undoubtedly caused by the trauma to my carotid artery when I was face down on the steps, with the side of my neck on the edge of a step and Silva with all his weight on my back. Fortunately the TIAs have become less frequent, but I still sometimes get them and I always think of Silva and his criminal friends in blue.

When I went to court my public defender, though very sympathetic, advised me to take the deal offered by the prosecutor: plead guilty to trespass (as a “violation,” which isn’t a crime, not even a misdemeanor) and pay a $50 fine, approximately what I made busting my ass that day.

I resisted because I was not guilty of anything and had suffered more than enough already, but she said that if I went to trial all the cops involved would lie without hesitation. It would be my word against the word of five cops and I could go to prison if I lost. I felt I had no choice, so I agreed.

Shortly after the unprovoked assault and battery on me, an act that would have sent a non-cop to prison for one to five years, I saw in the paper that Silva was named Officer of the Month. I almost puked all over his photo. He shouldn’t be a cop at all because he’s a psychopathic bully, a vicious, dangerous criminal with a badge and a gun. But the Maui Police Department loves his type.

Silva is well known on Maui. His name has come up many times in conversations around the island. He’s notorious for his brutality and many people hate him intensely for the humiliation and pain he has inflicted on them. Knowing this probably gives him great pleasure.

But does he also know that people say they’d love to torch his car, burn down his house and bash in his skull with a baseball bat? I have heard people say things like this. I must admit that I too have had similar feelings and fantasies.

I would wager that at least 99% of all the people who file complaints about police brutality receive a form letter (months later) that says the Maui Police Commission has thoroughly investigated the complaint, it finds there is no basis to it, and the case is closed. This has happened every time I have filed a complaint, except this time. This case was so atrocious they had to at least go through the motions and interview me.

Not surprisingly, after the so-called investigation the result was the same as always. They knew all the facts but still exonerated these dangerous criminals. The so-called commission has no credibility. It’s nothing but a white-washing agency, a little PR unit that actually shares an office with the police. No doubt they’re all good buddies, and each of the commissioners is complicit in police crimes and in covering them up. They’re part of the façade, the pretense, of the rule of law.

The Worst Case: The Corrupt County Teams Up with Racketeers and Issues a License to Murder Me 

Before considering this case it is important to consider a hypothetical case. Suppose a politician is campaigning for, say, county council, mayor or state senator. He (or she) is sign waving, an activity almost universally engaged in by local politicians during campaign season. He stands on a public sidewalk holding a sign urging people to vote for him and he offers flyers to people walking by. 

He’s doing everything by the book – standing six feet from the curb and 20 feet from the crosswalk, and taking care that his sign doesn’t block the sight line of any driver. Then an opponent of this politician, or an agent of the opponent, physically attacks and seriously injures him, rips up his sign and steals his flyers and trashes them. There are plenty of witnesses to the assault, including two police officers.

We all know what would happen next. The assailant would be arrested, and charged with assault, battery, criminal property damage and disorderly conduct. It would be front-page news in the papers and the victim would gain sympathy votes. The community would demand a harsh penalty because we treasure our First Amendment rights and we will not tolerate violent thuggery against politicians exercising those rights. The assailant would be heavily fined and sentenced to prison for at least a year. 

However, Maui county politicians, police, prosecutors and lawyers don’t recognize and respect the same rights for the general public, at least not for me. When I engaged in the same sign-waving activity as the politicians (except I actually followed all the rules while most politicians don’t), I was twice arrested for protesting without a permit though there is no such crime and no such permit. I was then brutalized by the arresting officer in one of those arrests. I informed all the county council members and the mayor about the incident and asked them to denounce the misconduct and emphasize that non-politicians have the exact same rights as politicians to sign wave and otherwise demonstrate. They all ignored me. 

In another instance I was assaulted, battered and severely injured by a security guard who was hired by a third party to do exactly that. I was then denied any semblance of justice by the police, including those who witnessed the assault, by the prosecutors and by the corporation counsel, who obstructed justice and committed other serious crimes in the case.

I provide an overview of this case in www.MoanaLutey.blogspot.com, and all the gory details in www.MauiFascism.blogspot.com and www.SueMauiTyrants.blogspot.com.

In these blogs I also recount several other crimes committed by County of Maui agents and employees against me. For example, in one case I was viciously assaulted by a drunken thug who broke three of my ribs and collapsed my right lung with a baseball bat. I was hospitalized for two weeks. The police who came to the scene didn’t interview me since the EMTs arrived first and whisked me off to the hospital. But they did interview the assailant and determined that it was a case of disorderly conduct. 

When I felt well enough on about the third day I called the police from the hospital and asked them to send an officer to take my statement. They refused because they had already determined it was merely disorderly conduct. Every day I called and repeated my request that an officer come to my bedside and take my statement, but they were adamant. I even got a social worker to plead my case, to no avail.

Finally, on my 14^th day in the hospital, I threatened to sue the police department, the county and the individual officers for obstruction of justice. Only then did they send an officer to take my statement. The charge was upgraded to assault in the second degree, a felony. However, weeks went by and there was no arrest. After a couple months I started demonstrating with a poster outside the prosecutor’s office directing people to my blog that described the incident. In this way I embarrassed them into finally making the arrest and pursuing the charge. If I had not acted the criminal would have gotten away with his violent crime. (Details of this case are in my blog www.MauiFascism.blogspot.com where it is referred to as case #5. The culprit’s name is Michael Best.) 

I have never received a penny of restitution, criminal or civil, for any of these cases of police and county brutality and misconduct. Nor have I ever received an apology. So now I am officially a second-class citizen, stripped of my most basic constitutional rights and in fear for my life should I dare attempt to exercise them. 

A few thousand words would be needed to describe the reforms necessary to prevent such injustices, so I will leave that for another blog. However, I will say that the following two reforms are absolutely essential. One, “qualified immunity” has to go. Take the case of my suing a cop for unlawful arrest after he arrested me for violating a TRO and I was jailed for 30 days awaiting trial. While incarcerated I was horribly abused by jail guards, denied medical care for a very painful kidney stone, denied access to a mental health counselor and denied access to my attorney. I never knew why I had been arrested until I finally gained access to the police report. 

Turns out the cop never read the address on the TRO that was in his hand when he arrested me. He simply took the word of the complainant, a drug-addicted grifter who conned me out of a week of my labor. She had tricked him into arresting me. The judge dismissed my lawsuit on the grounds of qualified immunity, explaining that police have a right to make stupid mistakes. Now, that’s just bullshit. Doctors, general contractors and plumbers have no such right that gives them immunity to lawsuits for gross errors and negligence. Why should cops have it?

A second essential reform is the right to private prosecution of criminal cases, which is available in some states, but not in Hawaii. If prosecutors, out of laziness, stupidity or malice for an individual, refuse to bring criminal charges that are obviously justified, the victim should have the right to convene a grand jury and ask for an indictment. For example, in the case above I spent 30 days in jail because of the perjury and false reporting of a thieving grifter. When I was exonerated and released after a judge called her a liar, I tried to have her arrested and prosecuted for perjury. The police would not even take my complaint. They said they never investigate complaints of perjury, and the prosecutor ignored me. So I should have been able to bring a case as a private prosecutor.

No amount of time will heal the wounds inflicted by being stripped of ones basic rights, of being relegated to a sub-human category. This is why nightmares, anxiety and depression have haunted me, and this is why I have been forced into regular professional counselling for years.

I have found little relief, so I will try a new tactic, which is to issue a warning to the criminals who comprise the County of Maui government, all branches included. I urge them, one and all, to take this warning seriously and heed it in all respects.

Warning to All County of Maui Government Agents and Employees:

There Will Be Lethal Reprisals Should Any of The Following Occur Again

I am arrested unlawfully and without justification; 

I am brutalized by police;

My First Amendment rights are violated;

I am denied equal justice, especially justice equal to that of county council members and other politicians;

Perjury is committed against me by county agents or employees; 

Provable perjury is committed against me by anyone, I am harmed by it (for example, I am arrested), and the police and prosecutors refuse to investigate and prosecute the crime;

I am assaulted and battered without justification or provocation, and the police and prosecutors refuse to investigate and prosecute; 

County of Maui Corporation Counsel obstructs justice in a civil case I am involved in, such as tampering with a witness, suborning perjury or suborning evasion of process service; 

A County of Maui employee or agent aids and abets a crime against me, such as when Moana Lutey was bribed to obstruct justice after I was assaulted and seriously injured by a health fraud store employee without the slightest justification.