I just read that Mr. Jones, the Nanawale gunman who held off all the police and the SWAT team in Nanawale got manini charges and $21,000 bail.
I want to know what the heck cops and prosecutors are doing protecting the guy who was beating up and choking a disabled woman over 50 who had half of her brain taken out, a metal plate in her head and she is an epileptic?
The cops were hiding out around the corner and telephoned her and made her walk down the street by herself without protection to get away from him. What is the point of the SWAT-mobile and bullet-proof vests if you didn’t use it to protect the disabled woman from live fire as she tried to escape? It is all show — no help folks.
When I got busted for growing weed in 2007 my bail was like $80,000. There were 15 cops all over the place with machine guns. When Mike Ruggles got busted for growing weed in 2015, his bail was $86,500, 12 cops with weapons.
In 2021, you can shoot around the neighborhood and try to burn down the house and you are practically a hero in the police eyes, as shown by the minuscule bail and lack of charges. The paper said there was guns ammo and drugs and so they have obviously downplayed it into a simple “domestic” squabble and I didn’t see any “drug” charges in his bail.
My friend’s house is full of broken glass and tear gas canisters embedded in her walls, little packages of pellets in a tiny sock used by the police to break windows as well, and burn marks and fire extinguisher retardant everywhere.
Instead of talking to the victim to find out the details of the case, like how long she knew this guy (which was not long at all) and what he did to her (moved in and changed the locks on her house while she was in the mainland) my friend gets a call to meet the police in the dark at the gate and gets her Miranda rights read to her, turning the victim who uses cannabis to treat her epilepsy into a criminal.
Once again, the message here in Hawaii Nei, particularly in rural neighborhoods such as Nanawale, is that you can strangle and beat up disabled people over 50, shoot up the neighborhood, try and burn her house down, keep the entire police force and SWAT at bay for 24 hours, and you are treated like a hero, you even get to comb your hair before they take the police photo of you.
Sara Steiner is a resident of Pahoa
