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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCOM 0324.001 2010-2012PiCoumal. (XilAtt'l '324 COMMUNITY ALLIANCE ON PRISONS 76 North King Street, Suite 203, Honolulu, Hawai'i 96817 Phone /E -mail: (808) 533 -3454/ kat.caphi @gmail.com Testimony Expressing Concerns on Resolution 127 -11 counciltestimony©co .hawaii.hi.us Hawaii County Council September 21, 2011 Aloha County Council Members! My name is Kat Brady and I am the Coordinator of Community Alliance on Prisons, a community initiative of churches, community organizations, scholars, researchers and concerned citizens working on justice issues across Hawai I nei for more than a decade. We respectfully offer our testimony always mindful that Hawai'i has approximately 6,000 people behind bars with almost 1,800 of those individuals serving their sentences abroad, thousands of miles away from their loved ones, their homes and, for the disproportionate number of incarcerated Native Hawaiians, far, far from their ancestral lands. Resolution 127 -11 authorizes the Mayor to enter into an agreement with the DOJ for a joint Hawai'i Task Force (HATF) between the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Hawai'i County Police Department (HCPD). Community Alliance on Prisons has concerns about furthering the widely - acknowledged failed war on drugs, the largest federally funded program with no evaluation. In these difficult economic times, it seems more appropriate to use our precious resources (money and people) to build social capital by investing in communities. We believe that any program that is requesting government resources should provide the appropriate accurate data to justify the request. To that end, we ask that the government supply the data on illicit drug trafficking at both Hilo International and Kona International Airports. This data should include the drugs, method of trafficking, amount confiscated, dates, person(s) Arrested, disposition of case(s). This data should also include the costs of these activities in relation to the amount of drugs confiscated. How much funding for drug interdiction is currently received by the county from federal and state sources? How much funding does the county provide for this purpose? How will the loss of up to three police officers affect the force? Will the county be asked for additional funding for more staff? Comm. No. 514. 1 Ref. To: Preseai Co u v+C i 1 Ref. Dote SEP 21 2011 We find the phrase immobilizing targeted violators troublesome and wonder how the HATF will do this without profiling and upholding the individual's constitutional rights. The federalizing of Hawaii laws is troublesome since Hawai'i's constitution is informed by our history including the arrest and overthrow of Hawai'i's Queen Liliu'okalani and the arrest and imprisonment of individuals solely based on their Japanese ancestry. These events were the impetus for Hawai'i's strong privacy clauses. The deputizing of county police by a federal agency as proposed by this agreement makes us question if this deputization /authorization ends after the not less than two (2) years from the agreement date of October 1, 2011. Please ask for clarification. We respectfully share the link to and two excerpts from an article that appeared in the Huffington Post on September 12, 2011: A Decade After 9/11, Police Departments Are Increasingly Militarized http: / /www.huffingtonpost.com/ 2011 /09/12/ police- militarization -9 -11- september -11 n 955508.html Joseph McNamara, who served as a police chief in both San Jose, California, and Kansas City, Missouri: "Simply put, the police culture in our country has changed," McNamara wrote in a 2006 article for the Wall Street Journal. "An emphasis on 'officer safety' and paramilitary training pervades today's policing, in contrast to the older culture, which held that cops didn't shoot until they were about to be shot or stabbed." Noting the considerable firepower police now carry, McNamara added, "Concern about such firepower in densely populated areas hitting innocent citizens has given way to an attitude that the police are fighting a war against drugs and crime and must be heavily armed." Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper: Like McNamara, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper finds all of this troubling. "We needed local police to play a legitimate, continuing role in furthering homeland security back in 2001," says Stamper, now a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. "After all, the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place on specific police beats in specific police precincts. Instead, we got a 10 -year campaign of increasing militarization, constitution- abusing tactics, needless violence and heartache as the police used federal funds, equipment, and training to ramp up the drug war. It's just tragic." Mahalo for this opportunity to share our concerns with the Council.