 Hi, I'm Jay Fidel here on Think Tech, and we're doing Community Matters Today, 1 p.m. on a given Tuesday. And that's Tim Appachella, and he is the host of Moving Hawaii Forward, which is a show about transportation. And this Community Matters Show is going to be also on transportation in its own way. Welcome, Tim. Thank you very much, Jay. Glad to be here. So now, we named this Tickets in Paradise. Can you give me the scope of this discussion, please? I'm going to guess it has something to do with a moving violation, but if it's not moving violation, maybe it's pertaining to tickets to the opera, movie theater. Could be. But since you mentioned transportation, I'm going back to moving violation. Yeah, I think you're right. Would I be close to that? Yeah, you would. I mean, Tickets in Paradise is a great trade name for you to sell out for tickets, but not today. Okay. Speeding tickets, and traffic tickets, and moving violation tickets, and for that matter, pedestrian tickets, all the tickets we got. That's a very expensive one, by the way. I know it is. Not that I know for personal experience. I sell them tickets, you know. We got tickets. We are festooned with tickets. Our lives are festooned with tickets. Do you think that's tuned? Yeah, festooned. I haven't heard that in a sentence in a long time, Jay, and I appreciate you bringing that forward. I assure you it's politically correct. So many words in our lexicon have gone outside of politically correct, but that one's still good. Still a safe word. And we're talking about Oahu, not necessarily the Neighbor Islands, because you and I don't drive that much or spend that much time on the Neighbor Islands, and we couldn't really state with any degree of familiarity what goes on on the Neighbor Islands. So let's talk about Oahu. Let's talk about what we know. Yeah, let's talk about having a million cars for one million people. Roughly it's one-to-one, which means a lot of families who don't have cars are counterbalanced by family who have too many cars. And let's talk about electric cars, as gee whiz, maybe 5,000, 6,000 electric cars in a population of a million cars. What's wrong with this picture? And the number of bicycles and bike lanes is minuscule compared to the cars. And the cars are stuffed into highways that can't hold them, highways that are not refreshed or rebuilt or remodeled or redesigned or even repaved. We're talking about streets that needed to be redesigned at statehood and haven't been. We're talking about too many cars, too many people in too little space and too little space on the house. And too many tickets. And too many tickets, because that's what comes out of it. But we're also talking about city government and for that amount of state government, which never seems to have enough money. I don't know if that's the economy or it's just the way government works or the way the taxing policy works or the fact there are too many employees working for city and state, but they got a maw to fill, got to develop a lot of revenue in order to fill that maw. A gaping maw. Gaping maw. So part of this, and it's hard to say exactly where it comes from because I can tell you that back in the time of say early statehood in the 60s when I first came here, there weren't so many tickets. It was hard to get a ticket and if a policeman stopped you, you're more likely to have a pleasant conversation with the policeman than get a ticket. There were a lot more warnings in those days and a lot more, I understand your situation and you could actually talk to the policeman. All of that to me is gone. But you're hinting at something and that is budget versus tickets and the correlation is if there's a shortfall in budget, is the pressure on the Honolulu Police Department to, I'm not saying there's a quota, but is there pressure to generate revenue via the ticket avenue? I don't know. Yeah. And on the quota thing, I've asked a lot of people, including former police officers, people who know about what goes on inside HBD and none of them has ever indicated to me there is a specific quota. On the other hand, I don't think you have to have a quota to have a quota. What I mean is there's a certain pressure going on. If I'm a cop who never gives a ticket to anybody, I get one level of credibility and You're not going to pass the sergeant's test. Right. If I give a lot of tickets and earn a lot of revenue to pay my own salary and actually it goes to the state, money goes to the state and pay state expenses, I have a different position in my career and my sergeant's exam, whatever my promotion. Your performance evaluation gets that little check mark? Yeah. I believe that to be so. And what we get here is more pressure on the average policeman to give tickets. The other thing is you really wonder about how the police are being deployed. They're supposed to fight crime. Big tickets per se is really not a big part of crime. Sorry. Crime is a big part of crime. Protect and serve the public. Protect and serve the public. Let's emphasize that, protect and serve the public. And so, you know, the question is, do they have enough time, enough officers? You know, they're downed officers there, recruiting now in case you're interested, Tim. I'm past my prime for that sort of thing. Yes, oh my. Yeah. I don't run in nearly as fast as I used to. Passed their prime for that. But, you know, too few policemen and more crime than they can handle. Crime in an overstuffed island, you know, has got to be raising. It's just got to be increasing. So are they out there spending their time on crime? I mean, I actually, my own personal experience is no. They do not feel capable of actually solving, investigating crime. I mean, if only 5.0 were true. If only CSI was, NS, what is it? NSI or... NSI or... Sorry, I didn't watch that. NSI is true, you know, that they would be actually solving the crime. I only watch things like Hawaii. I don't have time for all these other stuff. I know. I'm same here. That's why. Yeah. But the problem is that, you know, how are you going to deploy your force? And then, of course, you've got issues around the chief. And who is the chief, and what happened to the chief, and the chief is fighting in court and trying to get HPD to pay its legal expenses. I mean, the whole thing is a blur about what's going on. You could only follow the kind of news for a while. After a while, you kind of reject it. I don't want to know about this. I've been overexposed to it. Overexposed. But you have to give policemen their due, because they have a whole set of rules now, engagement, rules of engagement that leads to potential litigation, not only for the officer, you know, on their own, but also the department, the state or the city. There's litigation that, you know, is so sensitive now that you almost have to be an attorney to be a police officer. Well, a lot of them consider themselves that. You know. You know what? I would say, you know, that's true, but that's not, that's, you know, it reflects a certain amount of disdain, contempt for the police department and the police officers. And I think they have, they as a group, they as a force, they as a department have isolated themselves from the public. If you go out in the street and say, what do you think of police in general? You're going to get a mixed bag kind of answer. There's a physical environment that leads to that, and they've done study in the study and they know community policing is successful because you're out of your car, you're walking the community. Yeah, where is that? The more you put a, oh, in Seattle, community policing. That doesn't happen here. It's not a bad concept. I saw it too briefly. It's not a concept. It's not a bad concept. Okay. Then you have policemen on bikes. That's kind of a hybrid of, you know, a beat cop. I don't see many of those. You don't see many of them. The point I'm making is, if there's isolation of police, it's because they're usually in a car by themselves or, you know, and there's not opportunity to engage with the population that they're there to protect and serve. That could be changed, couldn't it? It could be changed quite easily. I'm not police chief though, and I'm not running for police chief. No. No, and I don't think you would. And I don't think there's really any leadership there right now. And so, you know, and, or for that matter in the state that supervises them or in the county that supervises them. So as a result, you know, there's no, there's no sort of persona of I'm here to help and serve. I want to help you. More than anything, I want to help you. I want to help you have you have confidence in the community. I want to make you safe. I want to make you feel good about living here. May I pull up on an analogy, a parallel analogy? If you're a lifeguard here in Honolulu County and you know that your liability has been stripped away from you, are you still not going to go out there and save lives? Of course you are. You're going to have that in the back of your mind when you have off time. You are. You're going to have that always in the back of your mind as to am I going to be subject to litigation if something goes very awry on my, my attempt to save someone's life. I don't think a policeman has any different kind of things on the back of their mind when they're trying to protect and serve is that the constant fear of being caught up on some charge and litigation. I think that's why we're starting to see the concept of body camps. It's happening on the radio. The radio has to happen here. Why hasn't it happened here? I don't know. And speaking of cams, you know, what have happened to the whole notion of van cam? That was an example of, you know, the conclusion the police were not able to monitor speeding. Well, for that matter, traffic signals. They couldn't do it. And then the forces, they didn't have the political will. They didn't want to do it. They had other things on their mind, probably giving tickets. And so, you know, as a result, we had a van cam statute that lasted within the same session. It was repealed in the same session. It was adopted as I remember. And we never got, we never got the person. So that was kind of an abuse of privacy. I can't remember the, the reason why that was. The reason, the reason which I don't buy at all. Before my time here, but. The reason for the demise of the van cam rule, I think was that you couldn't logically be sure that the picture of the person you saw driving was the picture of the owner. And that's the same argument they use about traffic light cams. Taking a picture of us, someone who's entered the intersection when it's, you know, in the red. They know the car. They can't associate. They know the registered owner of the car. But they don't want to give a ticket to the registered owner of the car or assume that the driver of the car was the registered owner. And that's why there's been a lot of litigation in Seattle that had this intersection cameras. And it's been successfully challenged. Yeah. Well, I don't think it should have been successfully challenged. I think we could use that technology. That and other technology. That would lead to the topic of tickets. And did you get a ticket of late? I got a ticket. And after this break, Tim, we're going to talk about your ticket and my ticket. I don't have any tickets. Well, I'm not sure. You're under us now. This guy looks familiar. He calls himself the ultra fan. But that doesn't explain all this. Why? Why? He planned this party, planned the snacks, even planned to coordinate colored shirts. But he didn't plan to have a good time. Now you wouldn't do this in your own house. So don't do it in your team's house. Know your limits and plan ahead so that everyone can have a good time. Aloha. My name is Raya Salter. And I'm the host of Power Up Hawaii, which you can see live from 1 to 130 every Tuesday at thinktechkawaii.com and then later on YouTube. I am an energy attorney, clean energy advocate, and community outreach specialist. And on Power Up Hawaii, we come together to talk about how can Hawaii walk towards a clean, renewable, and just energy future? To do that, we talk to stakeholders all over the spectrum from clean energy technology folks to community groups to politicians to regulators to the utility. So please join us Tuesdays at 1 o'clock for Power Up Hawaii. OK. We've been talking about, well, community matters here in thinktechk with Tim Epicella. And we're talking about tickets in paradise. And this is when you get a ticket. And then you have to respond accordingly to the system. And the question qualitatively is, how does that work? And is that the best expression of municipal policy and municipal practice within Hawaii, within HPD, Honorable Police Department? So you want to ask me some questions, Tim? And I'll answer some of them. OK, Jay, I'd love to. Jay, did you recently receive a ticket from the HPD? Yeah, I got a ticket. And on what day do you recall? About 90 days ago. Do you recall what time of the evening it was? It was 11 o'clock at night. 11 o'clock at night? Yeah. Can you describe the situation in which you were either justly or unjustly received that infraction? Well, I had a toothache. And I went to my dentist who fixed it and said I want to go to Longs and get some medicine for it. And I was driving in Baratania. Joe, just a fax. Joe Friday here. Just a fax. OK. You look like Joe Friday. So I'm driving in Baratania and there's some flashing lights along the way. And I don't know about you, but I see flashing lights, blue lights flashing everywhere in the city. There are flashing lights everywhere during the day. There are nights. There's always flashing lights. I mean, I think there's probably too much in the way of flashing lights. Anyway, there's no big deal. And I couldn't see any people. You know there's a study that Police Department have had that flashing lights actually draw people into them. Did you know that? No. They have an effect on you because they're flashing. They're blinding you. And probably they affect your eyesight. So anyway, I figure I'm in a safe lane and all this. And I go alongside. And I didn't pay too much attention. There's nobody there, anyway. And then I make a right onto New Guano Avenue. And lo and behold, the officer was following me. One of the guys in the flashing light car. Apparently he wasn't doing anything so important that he couldn't follow me. And as he followed me, he stopped me as I made the turn. And I'm shortening the story. But in a very unpleasant engagement, he said, you were too close to the flashing lights. And I said, really? I didn't know there was any law about that. I know that was anything. It was a recent one, actually. Yeah. Well, it's four or five years old because I checked it. It's recent in my world. And what happened is in a freeway. A policeman was rear-ended while he was stopped for something and killed. OK. And so they, on that one event, that one incident, they went to the legislature and got this statue that says, violations of code. If you're too close through the flashing lights. And what it says is you have to move over the next lane if you can. And that leaves a discretion of the driver to figure out, is it safe to move to the next lane? OK. And what's really interesting about this is the officer said to me, you were within 15 feet of my flashing lights. I said, really? I didn't know there was a rule about 15 feet or being too close. I really didn't know anything. And after the fact, I asked a lot of people, did they know? And nobody knows about this. And I went and looked up the code, actually. And the code said nothing about 15 feet. How wide is a car? Gee, I don't know. Six feet. That'd be two co-links. It would be more than a lane away. But I have to add that the lanes in Baratania at that place are really super wide because there's a bus stop. And because there's a fire station there, the lanes are really super. This is right in front of the fire station. Really super wide. And so I felt that I was at a perfectly safe distance. And I also felt that if I moved away from the flashing lights, it would not have been safe. So I just kept going, essentially. And so what bothers me about this is that it would be a perfect opportunity to educate me as a member of the public. I pay my taxes. I pay my dues. I'm older by twice than this young officer fellow, whose name I will not mention out of concern for his privacy. I asked him for his badge number, by the way, and he said he wasn't going to give me his badge number that it was written on the ticket. So I looked at the ticket and I read the badge number. That's like you try to take a girl out. And you say, what is your phone number? And she says it's in the phone book. And he said, well, what is your name so I can look it up in the phone book? She says, well, that's in the phone book too. So I walked away from that. And I didn't know who he was really. In any event, so that's my ticket. And I felt that there was really no violation of anything nor should it have been. And I felt that a warning would have been or a kind discussion, if you will, a kind suggestion would have been appropriate. I think a certain means also a big part of that is to educate. Yeah, right. But that was nothing. He was really mean and he was going to give me this ticket no matter what at 11 o'clock at night. And I'm in pain. I'm trying to get to the long-struck store. I told him that, but it didn't seem to have much effect. And I came away from that experience, thinking these very thoughts about how the police should be serving, protecting, helping. They're our friends, our neighbors. They should be kind to us. You know, they should, we pay their salary, man. But that's not what I got from him at all. I was adverse to him. I was turned him out to a criminal. You know, I had done a really, really bad and morally reprehensible thing. And he was going to give me a ticket no matter what. He was angry, man. In addition to the ticket, did he give you some choice words or was it just the issue? No choice words. Okay, good. But he was angry and he wasn't, you know, he wasn't going to engage with me at all. Oh, at one point, yeah, I opened the door to my car. I opened the door because I would, you know, talk with him. And two things came out of that. One is he's in a car. He's in a car. And he barked it out at me like I was going to get out and do something horrible to him. Maybe that's the training. The training more sensitive. And the other thing he says, huh, you're not wearing a safety belt. And I said, yeah, because I opened the door in my car. And again, that's why I'm not wearing my safety belt. He was going to try to nail me for everything he could. And, you know, it's an attitudinal thing that really bothers me about this. But you want to hear the second part now, right? I do want to hear about that, Jay. Absolutely. So a few weeks later, more like a month later, in my return dates, I go to court. By the way, it was wrong. The date on the ticket was wrong. I had to go check and find out what the right date was, which is cute. So I go down to court on the day. It was a Monday morning. And I wait in this courtroom for some time. And the people in the courtroom, you know, like everybody's in Zories. Now, I was the only guy in business clothes in the courtroom, honestly. And, you know, it's like another, the other half of the population was there. And, okay, so I wait my turn. And the judge says, I won't mention her name in the interest of privacy either. The judge says, how do you plead? How do you respond to this ticket? And I said, I contested ticket. I would like a trial, I said. I contested, I would like a trial. Not guilty, right? Immediately. Immediately. Without taking a breath, she says, this court finds for the state and against you in this matter. Really? I just pleaded not guilty. How could you do that? You didn't take any evidence. And then she says, and I'm finding you $50. Okay? That's interesting, judge. But, you know, I know enough to know that in this country, you want a trial, you get a trial. You plead not guilty, you're not guilty until they prove with evidence. The cop wasn't there, so what's going on? She explains to me, no, I'm giving you an option. Oh, now it's an option. Now it's an option. Before it was a verdict. Before it was a verdict, now it's an option. If you want to pay $50, then you can dispose of it that way. If you want to have a trial, you can dispose of it that way. If you want a trial, you have to go tell the people outside in the clerk's office that you want a trial. You have to tell them your decision in this matter. Well, you know, I already told you, didn't I? I had a record and all this in the clerk's office. Well, no, you have to tell them again. Interesting. So, okay, I paid the $50. Because I couldn't stand being there. I couldn't stand being there. You had a certain level of indignation, a certain right for a trial by a judge of your peers. No jury. No jury. But the bottom line is, you capitulated and you paid the fine. I'm not proud of that. But I thought you were going to tell me a story about how you went to a trial because the whole experience in that courtroom was slightly bizarre. Mind you, I've been in court through a long career in practicing the system lost. Because I walked out of that place and I've respected the law. I'm very patriotic, very faithful to government in general. I consider myself part of government. Government is part of me. I'm in the social governmental compact all my life. I served in the service, you know, the suede is with me. But I lost confidence in the system that day. So what is this? This is, you know, this is in violation of everything I've learned in school. And what that cop did is in violation of everything I expect cops to do and care about. The whole system was screwball. And I'm here to tell you that what lost that day is the system lost my respect that day. That's what I'm here to tell you. But you said that day. It'll be back for another day. Oh, not. Not that you're going to be written with an infraction, but the system has to work. It has to be, it has to have some credibility. Absolutely, because the system needs to be improved. Right. You know, all of those things could be, should be, absolutely must be improved. Now, when I went to the traffic court, and I would admit it. You admitted. Ah. I said I was never found guilty of an infraction. I didn't say I didn't receive one. Okay, so. You're in a tranny. You're in a tranny. You understand these things. I went to traffic court to basically do what you did. And what I found was interesting is the bailiff, which I don't remember his name. And if I did, I would want to keep it private anyway. But the bailiff tried to discourage me from even going up before the judge. He looked at my ticket. And he was, and I won't, you know, I won't try to imitate his accent. But he said, they got you. Why are you here? They got you. Why are you in wasting your time coming to this court? And my response is, we'll see about that. All right. What happened? Well, you know, I did my best, Bill Clinton, Ignacian, crooked finger doing this that I've never had a moving violation in 30 years and I did not commit this infraction. And, you know, it went on and on. And clearly the judge was not amused, but thought it was half worth listening to. And what saved the day was that when you receive a speeding ticket, and if it's not by radar, but you're actually being paced, it's advisable for the police officer to write the exact speed of that pace, not a range. And what I mentioned to the judge was, if I'm guilty of speeding, I'd like to know precisely what speed I was going at, a range of 35 to 50. By the way, I was going 50. But she saw the point. She couldn't take the statute of limitations. That's correct. She came down the verdict and I was not guilty. Absolutely wonderful. Now, on the way out, the bailiff said, good job, brah. Yeah. All right. Well. So the point is, I didn't pay the fine and I wasn't going to pay the fine. I was going to argue to the F degree. Well, I guess you have more time on your hands than I do. That was the issue. I wasn't going to spend, you know, waiting. I was waiting for this arraignment affair. Then I was going to have to wait again for the trials, going to muck up my calendar forever. And I don't have the time for that. You know what a lot of people do. In fact, on this day that I did go to the traffic court, a lot of people sub not subpoena, but they request the officer to be present during that hearing. And what they hope for is that the officer has way too busy and doesn't show. Because traditionally, if the officer doesn't show, the ticket is usually thrown out of court. But this particular judge said, if there's anyone in this courtroom who has subpoena, or not subpoena, but has asked the officer to come here, and if that officer is not here, we will reschedule. And if they don't come the next time, we will reschedule again. It happens. It doesn't give, none of this gives you high confidence, you know, in that system. But I want to tell you the capper though, the capper, there's more. So I go outside. I think about it. I scratch my head. I get a headache thinking about this, but I got to get out of that court, that courtroom in that court building. It's really not a place you want to spend any time in. I don't want to go into detail, but it's really unpleasant to be there. So I go out. I go out. Yeah, I mean, we're talking a table of horrors. Really, to me it was. And I practiced law for 50 years in this state. So I go outside. I go to the cashiers window. It's not $50. It's not $50. It's $92, or $93. I can't remember. Okay. What's this? K-PASA. What's going on? So, well, there are extra charges on top. There's this fee, and the administrative fee, and that fee, and the number of charges. And that's how the thing gets almost doubled between the time you're in court and the time you're at the window. That's a really, you know, is this a rip? What is this? This is not what it's supposed to be. And I must say that I came away with a further level of, you know, discomfort about how the system works. Somebody should change the system. Somebody has to look into this system. I don't know whether it's the police commission or the state, the state legislature, or HPD itself, once it gets back on its feet. But somebody has to look into this. You know, law-abiding citizens should not be treated this way, either by the police or in court. We should have a good experience, not a bad experience. We should find people who understand and want to understand what happened, not hand out these, once you kick yourself in the Alcoly kind of results. So that's my bottom line on this. Over the good old days when the police actually talk to you, over the good old days when they weren't so angry, over the good old days when they were writing you a ticket, knee-jerk, and trying to hit you as hard as they could, over the good old days when you go to court. Isn't that the price of more and more population coming into the island? The more people you have, the more you have to enforce everything that's on the books, rather than having the latitude and the luxury of saying, let this be an educational moment, rather than a infraction moment. We have a lot of deterioration of our quality of life in these islands. We don't have time here in the next minute to go into that, but suffice to say this is not the way it should be, and this is, in my view, another element of the deterioration of quality of life in these islands. Too many tickets, too many people being stopped for silly things, too many experiences in court. As one guy, a lawyer of great prestige and renown, said to me, you know, how do you judge the interface of the court system in the public? Do you judge that as a supreme court? Do you judge that as the intermediate court of appeals? Do you judge that in the circuit court, the general jurisdiction court? Or do you judge that in the traffic court? Answer? Traffic court. That's where the people meet the system. This was not a good meeting, and that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Glad you did. Say good night, Tim. Good night, Tim. Thank you, Jay, for having me on. Thank you, Tim. Good discussion.