 Welcome to Tuesday morning. It's not Monday, it feels like Monday, but it's Tuesday after Labor Day. I'm Jay Fidel, this is Sync Tech, this is Community Matters, and today we're talking to Megan Cowher. She is a candidate having succeeded past the first round of voting on primary day. She's one of two candidates for prosecuting attorney to be voted on an election day. Welcome to the show, Megan Cowher. Thank you very much, Jay, for having me. So now you're in a race with Steve Arm. What's the difference between you and Steve for prosecuting attorney? Well, the clearest biggest difference is my youth and my energy. I've got a lot of energy. I wake up at five o'clock every morning and I can work all day, all night to about 11 o'clock at night. Okay, and you've been a deputy prosecuting attorney before. Can you talk about how long and under what prosecuting attorney what your experience was like? Yeah, I was under Peter Carlisle. He hired me right on the spot. I moved up very quickly through to the career criminal division and I was there for, I was at the prosecutor's office in total for about five years. I've done about 45 jury trials. I've got, now I've got experience as a deputy prosecuting attorney, a defense attorney and a civil litigator. Oh, you're in private practice now. So are you doing criminal stuff or civil stuff right now? I'm a civil litigator. 80% of my practice is civil litigation. I do take some criminal defense cases, but I only take very, very big cases. Murders, sex assaults and fraud. Ah, white collar. So you have a degree in accounting from UH and I guess that was before you went to law school. And the question I have for you is does that especially qualify you for white collar crime? Yes, you know, lawyers are afraid of numbers, not me. I'm not really afraid of much, Jay. But numbers are very easy for me. I can go through spreadsheets and documents like no other and I can comb through millions of documents and it doesn't pose a problem for me at all. Yeah, let's drill down a little on that. You know, we have really, maybe I'm being binary about this but we have two kinds of crime. One is the physical, classical, call it common law crimes, although they're all statutory. And the other is white collar crime, which is actually, it's punished less severely, at least it is in the federal system. And it's harder to prosecute because you have to have those special skills, special training to deal with the numbers, as you said. And my question to you Megan is what's more important than not only in general, but specifically in Hawaii, I've always had the impression that we didn't do very well at white collar crime. And a lot of people got away with a lot of things because there was nobody around to investigate and prosecute them. How do you feel about that? Well, I think that's changing. The Honolulu Police Department does have a very good team of white collar detectives and they're very good at what they do. I mean, they can access bank accounts, they know who to call, when to call. They've gotten a lot of experience in it in the past 10 years. So I think it's out of sight, out of mind for most people because we don't see the results of it, but I'll tell you, when you're hit with a white collar crime as a victim, it's devastating. Trying to clean up your record and getting on the phone call with banks and credit unions and credit agencies is a huge headache. And so while people might think that, oh, it doesn't really happen or it doesn't happen that often, it does happen and it's extremely devastating for victims. You know, one of the things that's happening in COVID and I want to ask you more about COVID in a little while, but is that there's more scammers out there on the internet? And we know that nationally, internationally, of course, and we know it locally too. And I guess I would wrap that in white collar crime, but if you put me on a jury, I'll tell you now, on the record, if you put me on a jury with a scammer, beware, I don't like that much. And so the question is, can we, are we prosecuting internet scammers? And what would your platform include about prosecuting internet scammers? I will say at the state level, it's very difficult. I'm not sure if HPD has the resources at this point to get the evidence that we need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this quote internet scammer has violated the law. However, I do practice in the federal court and we see it in federal court, not all the time, but we see it pretty frequently. The federal government really is in a better position because they're across state lines. A lot of these things that happen, happen across state lines, not just within Hawaii. And because the federal government span reaches across state lines, they are in a better position to investigate these types of crimes. And the federal government has much more resources than the state. Yeah, you're talking about the state, but the prosecuting attorney is the city county job, it's the city county office. And so what's the intersection there between prosecutions by the prosecuting attorney in the city county and prosecuting attorney, or rather a state deputy attorney general, who might be called a prosecutor. I know for example, there's a unit in the state attorney general's office that's dedicated to internet scams. So I wonder what the crisscross is on the two jurisdictions. The division that you're referring to in the attorney general's office, I think you're referring to the internet enticement of a minor. That's the division that they have at the attorney general's office. So basically, if you get on the internet and you attempt to hook up with a minor, that's the attorney general's division that's going to charge you with that type of case. Otherwise, 90% of the crimes on Oahu are prosecuted by the Honolulu prosecutor's office. We're talking about assault, fraud, theft, homicide, sex assault, kidnapping, robbery, burglary, all the driving offenses. The attorney general's office only handles the state cases for example, welfare fraud, Medicaid fraud, electronic enticement of a minor. And any cases that the prosecutor's office has to recuse its office from. I see. So it's just kind of sharing and sometimes one, sometimes the other depending on the circumstances. You know, one thing about the prosecutor's office is that it took a bad blow with the KLOHA business. I say business I think that's the only work that really a thought. It was a real enterprise. And you know, that's credibility issue. It has to be restored. How do you propose to do that? Cause people walk around still today, still today shaking their heads about KLOHA and the kind of corruption that flowed out of his management of the police department and his wife's involvement in the prosecutor's office. I'll tell you Jay, I am the only candidate that has actively in has actively assisted the United States Attorney's office in investigating both Catherine KLOHA and Keith Connoisseur. I have sat down with the assistant United States Attorney the FBI, the agents. I've given them information. I've given them facts. I've given them witnesses. I've given them evidence. And I know exactly who was involved in that scandal with Catherine KLOHA. There's a handful of people that are still in that office that have access to files. They have access to witnesses. They have access to information, confidential information that they shouldn't have access to. And they need to leave that office. And I have made a promise to our community that I will terminate all of them if they won't leave on their own. Suppose they fight with you. I mean, they can try to bring a wrongful termination lawsuit, but they'll lose. Okay, you were there, you know. I do know. Yeah, well, it pays to have that kind of experience because the public reading the newspaper and watching the ad hoc information that comes out on the six o'clock news, they don't necessarily know what happens. And that's the way Hawaii is, isn't it? There's two levels of things. But one of the things I mentioned before the show is that Peter Karlau took positions on public policy issues. And he would lobby actually for bills that straighten things out as far as he was concerned about the way the criminal law worked, the way the prosecutor's office worked and so forth. I remember going to a downtown business community, luncheon one time, and he was there as a guest speaker. And at the end of his remarks, he got down on one knee on the floor and in front of a couple of hundred people. And he begged them to support one bill he was working on. So, I mean, I don't think, in my view, or rather, he didn't think that being prosecutor was just about managing the prosecutor's office. It was about managing the criminal law so that the prosecutor and the police could do the jobs they were supposed to do. What's your thought about that? I agree, Jay. We are the expert in our field. The legislature has no idea how the criminal justice system works. They have no idea how to treat a mentally ill person. They have no idea how to treat a drug addict. And I'll tell you, I do know. I have the personal experience in having interventions with family members. I have treated many, many people that suffer from mental health disorders, including schizoaffective disorder, schizophrenia and bipolar. I am very familiar with it. And I want to educate the legislature specifically on mental health and drug addiction. That raises the question of this whole tension between doing punishment and deterrence on the one hand and caring about humanity on the other hand. And I think a prosecutor is charged with making those decisions at least some of the time. You have to represent the public need for justice, but at the same time, you have to be human. And so I wonder what your philosophy is about that. Which side do you tilt on and how do you blend the two? People get the misconception because I do want to enforce the law on all levels. I want to charge all crimes. However, treatment is always the better answer. I am a huge advocate of the Habilitat treatment facility. I do believe in all the other treatment facilities as well, but I'm closest to Habilitat because as a career criminal deputy, I dealt with the worst of the worst. And so they were looking at Habilitat or nothing at all. And so I am very familiar with that program. I'm a huge advocate of that program and I'm a huge advocate of treatment. And mental health treatment is very key because I see a lot of people self-medicating and I see a lot of people not understanding the mental health disorders that our community is suffering from. And I want to be able to help these people. And so I'm very familiar with that program. I'm a huge advocate of that program and I'm a huge advocate of treatment. And so I think that's a pretty big challenge and the goal of Habilitat is to help people or some other communities to be quickly free from the control of the law. Yeah. We have to make the best community we can have. We have to recapture the old Oel Comet every level. And so that brings me to the question of racism. We've seen all this Black Lives Matter protests against racism, systemic racism, in mainland. contrast with the kind of racism that people talk about on the mainland. And what can we do about it? At least what can the prosecutor do about it? I do not believe that there is systemic racism in the justice system. I believe that people suffer from their own internal bias and internal prejudice, but I do not believe that as a justice system, we focus and we are against a certain race. I do not believe that at all. You know, I see it in the mainland. I see it every single day. I can't even keep track with what white officers shot, what black suspects. I can't keep up with it anymore. And it's devastating to watch that happen, but we don't have the same type of racism in Honolulu. I will say that there is an ACLU study, which shows that there is an over-representation of native Hawaiians in our justice system versus in our community. But I strongly believe that that is a socioeconomic issue. And as a prosecutor, I would like to go out there and be a community leader, show these underprivileged communities, Hawaiians or Pacific Islanders, that they can educate themselves and learn, you know, crystal methamphetamine is probably the most aggressive factor in our criminal justice system. And I want to educate our community about that. But police officers do not say, well, that person is native Hawaiian and that person is not native Hawaiian. I'm going to arrest the native Hawaiian and let's go after him. We are not doing that here in Honolulu. It is not the same as in the mainland. Well, suppose, just suppose hypothetically there was a bad apple police officer. And I say that maybe that's too conclusory. There was a police officer that mistreated somebody. Whether it's on racism or just being mistreated somebody. Would you have any reluctance, you know, given, you know, the fact that you're a prosecutor or the fact that you're experienced in this whole area of law and prosecuting that cop? Absolutely not. I've taken the position that the prosecutor's duty is to protect our community by objectively applying the law against anyone that violates the law, whether the person is a police officer or non-police officer, rich or poor, homeless or not homeless, local or not local. We cannot choose who we prosecute by race. And I will tell you, there were other candidates pushing that agenda. And I kept saying that, that is exactly what leads to corruption. Because if I get to choose what race of people I'm now prosecuting, the next prosecutor is going to say, well, she chose to prosecute that race so I'm going to prosecute another race. That's, it's a slippery slope and we cannot go down that slope. Good. Okay, so now I want to know about COVID, you know? COVID has changed our lives. I know it's changed my life and if it's changed my life, then it must have changed a lot of lives, okay? I'm sure it's changed your life. Even though you're still running in the middle of COVID, I commend you on that, you know, that's admirable. But the question is, how has COVID changed the justice system? How has it changed the job of prosecuting attorney? How has it changed the criminal justice system? And how is it going to change it further as time goes by? Well, what we see right now is, you know, there was a two large releases of inmates from old triple C just because of COVID. And I will tell you, I objected to those releases because these people have already been found by an objective neutral judge to be a threat to our society. And now the Hawaii Supreme Court says, well, because we're suffering from COVID, just release them. And I'm talking about Rashad Battle. Rashad Battle assaulted somebody. He was released from old triple C because of COVID initially. Two days later, he harassed somebody by threatening them. He was arrested. He was released three days later. He assaulted and stole from somebody else and was re-arrested. And then he was released and one day later assaulted somebody. And he was released just because of COVID. And we can't keep doing this. We cannot keep releasing these inmates just because we're in the midst of COVID. And that's what we're looking at. And if I was the prosecutor, I would object. And I would say listen, Supreme Court. Rashad Battle did this. And I have a list of other people. And, you know, unfortunately, I don't think the prosecutor's office made that much of an objection to releasing the COVID inmates. You know, in Europe, we've seen and we get to know in Europe, they're very, what do I call it? They avoid recidivism by allowing the individual inmates to come out into the community, work in the community. Of course, they select them. It's not just a blanket release. It's a selection process. And they take people who've done really serious crimes and they have them out there in the streets doing, you know, infrastructure work and all that. And it works. They don't have a lot of recidivism and they don't have a lot of mean people coming out of prison. So do you think that the prison system, the justice system, if you will, is working well in terms of returning individual convicted criminals to society as better people? I think that treatment has changed over the past five years and probably more like 10 to 15 years. And I believe the Department of Public Safety needs to revamp its programs because I represent a lot of people in saguaro right now. And the programs that they have are very archaic. I believe that the Department of Public Safety needs to get in touch with people like Jeff Nash, the executive director of Habilitat to find out what type of treatment is being provided nowadays. This new treatment for new criminals and we need to start teaching our inmates to learn a trade. We need to start teaching them when to relax and how to relax without using drugs, when to work hard, when to sleep. I know it sounds crazy, but they need to be taught these things because they don't have these life skills. They don't know how to relax when it's time to relax, how to work when it's time to work, how to make food for yourself and clean up after yourself. After you've made that food, how to make your bed. And I know that these things sound very simplistic to you, Jay, but these guys, they don't know these skills. And I know this because I represent them. Yeah, very important. So, oh, some questions have come in. Let me, what are your shortcomings? Okay, this is the rec question. What are your shortcomings in the race for prosecute? You wanna talk about it? Sure, I'm the underdog. That was made very clear to me when I decided to run. Steve had three people, our mutual friends come and tell me, listen, don't run, you're gonna lose, you're gonna be outfunded, you're gonna be outnamed, and you're gonna be outvoted. And I said, have you met me? And here I am. What was the answer to that? Okay. Yeah. Exactly. Next question is, do you support the drug court, Megan? Yes, I do support drug court. I will say hope probation more needs to be refined and retuned, it's not working. Steve Wom did great things for our community. He did help start hope probation, but that was 15 years ago and it is not working the way he envisioned it. And now what my clients and a lot of other clients are doing are gaming the system. And they're really realizing that all they have to do is admit to smoking drugs. They'll sit in the cell block for three hours and then they'll be released. They'll sit in the cell block for five hours and then they'll be released. Then three days, then five days, then seven days, then 10 days, then 12 days. And it's a revolving door because all they're doing is, yes, I admit, I smoked crystal methamphetamine and they know they just have to sit at OCCC for a couple of days and then they're released. And so it's not working. What would you do to make it work? Well, they've got to have less chances. If they mess up, they can't have 15, 20, 30 times to come back into the jail cell three times and they've got to go to Halawa. I mean, they've got to shape up or ship out. I mean, they've got to do the program, do the treatment or go to prison. You know, we have a sort of degrading social environment because of COVID. There's a lot of domestic violence and that is a crime. There's a lot of street violence resulting from people who have been cooped up too long and really can't stand it anymore. And it's not just demonstrations, it's out there with weapons and dastardly felonies. And my guess, let's assume for this discussion, that will increase as COVID increases. If COVID reduces, we're all better off. But if COVID increases, then it makes people feel cooped up. We're gonna have more of that. How can the prosecutor's office deal with an increase in physical crimes? Well, my theory has been that we have to charge all crimes across the board. Nonviolent crimes, mid-level crimes and high-level crimes, murders, assaults, everything. Right now it's hard because people are committing crimes, HPD is coming to arrest them. They're being put at OCCC, but they're being released pending their trial because of COVID. And I'll tell you that needs to stop because these guys that are committing crimes, they know that they're just gonna be released. I mean, I talked to HPD on a daily basis. They tell me last week there were five shootings that people didn't hear about because it wasn't on the news, but that's what's happening. They need to be put at OCCC and they need to stay there pending their trial. And I will tell you, the problem with that is we're not having any jury trials right now because the judiciary can't legitimately bring in 80 people from the community and say, here, sit in this small room and decide guilt or innocence. Or even 12 people and have them sit in a little small box. So I told you before the show that I wanted to offer you an opportunity to express anything you wanted to talk about, how your campaign has been, how you're dealing with it, how you're dealing with the opposition, so to speak, how well it's going, whatever, whatever policy point you wanna make, take a couple of minutes and tell us. Okay, well, this is what I'll tell you. The reason why we have seen this increase in crime in Honolulu is because the current administration's failed policies. They were not charging low level crimes. And this is what I mean, Jay, by low level. If you're at home and your child or your grandchild is sleeping and somebody breaks into the home but doesn't physically hurt your child or your grandchild, but is in arm's length reach of this person and reaches over your child or grandchild to pick up a laptop or pick up a cell phone or pick up an iPad and burglarizes your house and leaves. And we can prove that it's that person. The prosecutor's office has put that to the back burner and they tell HPT, we're not gonna charge that crime. Someone steals your car and is driving and has the key but has no authority to drive your car. Prosecutor's office is not gonna charge that crime. And the problem with this is when this person gets away with it, and I'm not just talking one, two or three times, I'm talking about 10, 15, 20 times, you know what happens when someone tries to stop them on the 21st try, they become violent. They whack you on the head with a baseball bat, with a golf club, they stab you with a knife. And this is why we're seeing an increase in crime because the prosecutor's office failed to charge those low level crimes over the past 10 years. And the criminals have gotten empowered, emboldened. They've become brave, brazen and aggressive. And that's why we're seeing this increase in violent crime. We have to stop this. I'm going to charge all levels of crime, low level, mid level and high level because crystal methamphetamine has taken over these criminals. These guys, the child protection services has yanked these children from these homes, yet these people still smoke crystal methamphetamine. These guys have chosen to sleep on the hard concrete with no home, yet these guys still smoke crystal methamphetamine. These guys choose to eat out of a rubbish can just to still smoke crystal methamphetamine. And so they are not voluntarily gonna go in and get treatment for their crystal methamphetamine addiction. They need to be faced with the opportunity, either prison or treatment. And I'll tell you, prison saves lives, Jay. I know people don't like to hear that, but prison saves lives. I grew up on the street. I was homeless at 15 years old. I have lived on the street. My friends are former drug addicts who have made great things in their lives and have gotten treatment and own businesses now. And they tell me, we talk about it all the time, prison saves lives. And so people need to be charged so that they can be faced with the option, treatment or prison. And I intend to enforce the law on all levels for all of those reasons. And we need to clean up our community. And I intend to do that. You know, I was gonna ask you, what the difference is between a civil lawyer, a business lawyer and a criminal litigator. And I don't think I have to ask you that because this whole discussion has been an answer to that question. You are a litigator for sure. But I will ask you this question, Megan. As prosecutor, you're gonna try cases? Because not all prosecutors do that. I'm going to try cases, Jay, because part of the reason why I ran is because the office is lacking direction. It's got great deputies in there. They're great trial attorneys, but they need to see it. This is how we do trials, deputies. I want you to see it, right? I'm gonna take the hard cases, like unauthorized control of a propelled vehicle where a defendant has the key. And everyone thinks, oh, he's just gonna get up there and say he has a key, no way. I'm from the streets. I've lived on the streets. I'm gonna get under the skin of that defendant and I'm gonna show the jury that he's lying. And when he's convicted, he's gonna get the treatment that he needs. Thank you, Megan. Megan Cow, candidate for prosecuting attorney of the city and county of Honolulu. It's been great having you on the show. Thanks for coming around. Mahalo. Mahalo, Allah.