01-29-20 Regular Session Minutes

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say, it really is a challenge to testify on a draft resolution that is not written yet. So I hope you're just kind of open... That wasn't me was it? Mr. Robinson: No. Ms. Wong-Wilson: Okay. Mr. Robinson: Go ahead please. Ms. Wong-Wilson: Open to the wide range of comments that you're receiving. It does appear though that your intent is to investigate the fact that the Hawai`i Police Department didn't come and arrest all of us. I'm one of the kupuna on the Mauna and we do invite you to please come and visit us because then we can get into a real conversation. You can come and see exactly why we're there and where we are on the side of the road right now. As you know, we left the road on December 26 when after the Governor declared the road open so I remind you first of all that the Governor declared the closed on July 15th. And so we took to the road on the 16th and were arrested on the 17th of July, sitting on a closed road. We had never stopped the public from going up the road. Although it was admittedly, you couldn't drive through our tent. But the...all the vehicles were directed around us to the cattle guard where the DOCARE officers, the State officers, sat. And they kept people from traveling further up the mountain. The general public, which included our own people as well as hunters and tourist. So the people that did have free access to the Mauna through this whole time...this whole period of time about approximately five months was all the astronomers and all the their staff support, all of their contractors who continue to go up to the summit area to work on the facilities up there, all of the employees that work up on the Mauna and of course all law enforcement. And at one time there were quite a number of law enforcement officers from all agencies who were up on the mountain for any length of time. So we were arrested, but not by the Hawaii Police Department. We were arrested by the Department of Land and Natural Resources, by the DOCARE officers, by the State sheriffs. The Hawaii Police Department I believe was somewhere. I don't know where though. They weren't readily visible to us. They weren't in the front rows. The only time in this five month period that I ever encountered the police, Hawaii Police Department directly...because I'd been residing on the Mauna continuously since the beginning...were the two nights that I called for police assistance because we had an individual who was acting out on the Mauna. And we wanted some assistance. So two times, I had direct contact with the Police 23