MARIJUANA LAW NEEDS CLARIFYING, PANEL SAYS

Police Pot Raids Generate Complaints From Residents

"Ambiguous" wording in Hawaii County's so-called "Peaceful Sky" law
needs rectifying because it's hampering the Police Commission's work,
says the panel's chairman.

The voter-approved initiative that took effect in November 2008
requires police to give the lowest enforcement priority to people at
least 21 years old who grow, possess or smoke marijuana on private
property. Possession is capped at 24 plants or 24 ounces of processed
pot.

The Peaceful Sky Alliance, previously known as Project Peaceful Sky,
pushed for the legislation that passed by nearly a 10,000-vote margin.

But police, citing overriding state and federal anti-pot laws, have
continued to conduct marijuana raids. They arrested 197 people for pot
offenses during the first five months of last year, according to
Police Department statistics that the law requires be compiled every
six months.

The enforcement activities have generated complaints that police are
violating the law. Some of the allegations have been filed with the
nine-member Police Commission, which last month postponed acting on
two in hopes of getting the County Council to clarify the law.

Thomas Whittemore, commission chairman, made that formal request to
County Council Chairman J Yoshimoto of Hilo in a Dec. 29 letter.

"In reviewing the aforementioned lowest law enforcement priority of
cannabis ordinance, the commission has concern surrounding some of the
ambiguous verbiage," Whittemore wrote in his two-page letter.

Yoshimoto said while he doesn't recall Whittemore's letter, he'll
honor the request by asking the county's top civil attorney to "review
the legal aspects of the law" to determine if clarification is warranted.

"I think that would be in the public's best interest," Yoshimoto
said.

When council members earlier this month discussed a nonbinding
resolution asking the state Legislature to decriminalize marijuana,
the debate became so heated that North Kona Councilman Kelly
Greenwell, author of the measure, threatened to resign if his
colleagues voted against his proposal. Council members did just that,
however, and Greenwell withdrew his threat.

The council's decision to place the enforcement question on voter
ballots even though it didn't generate the minimum number of required
voter signatures prevented lawmakers from correcting "the obvious
ambiguities in the law as presently written," Whittemore noted in his
letter.

"The commission feels it cannot perform its Charter-mandated
requirement of investigating and reviewing complaints made by the
public against the Police Department and its personnel since the
underlying law concerning this particular issue is wrought with
ambiguity," he added.

Specifically, Whittemore is asking council members to answer three
questions: Does the law legalize pot; is the Police Department
prohibited from receiving money for marijuana eradication; and is the
department banned from spending county money for that purpose.

"I would suggest to Mr. Whittemore that he read the law and read it
through because it's all spelled out in the ordinance," Wolf Daniel
Braun, Peaceful Sky Alliance president, said Wednesday after being
read portions of Whittemore's letter. "I don't think the law needs to
be revised."

It states that the council "shall not authorize the acceptance ... of
any funding that is intended to investigate, cite, arrest ... adults
for cannabis offenses in a manner inconsistent with the county's
lowest law enforcement priority."

Similar wording is used to bar the county from spending "any public
funds" for anti-marijuana efforts not allowed by the law.

"It makes it less legal," Braun said when asked if the law legalizes
marijuana use.

If anything needs amending, it's laws making pot illegal and
regulating its use for medical purposes, said Braun, who took issue
with the Police Commission's work.

"I feel the Police Commission is not living up to its Charter-mandated
responsibilities," he said. "There's no teeth to the Police
Commission. They can't really do anything."

According to the Charter, the all-volunteer commission is responsible
for reviewing the Police Department's yearly budget, appointing and
removing the police chief, and investigating complaints against
on-duty officers. The commission cannot impose penalties, but rather
is limited to forwarding its investigative findings to the chief.

A proposed Charter amendment that would have created a new office of
police oversight and complaints, complete with the power to subpoena
police officers, was defeated by the council in April 2008.

A similar effort failed two years earlier when lawmakers decided not
to ask voters to create an independent police auditor to investigate
complaints against police officers.

In February 2007, the commission stopped forwarding complaints about
police to independent investigators, opting instead to let the
department's Internal Affairs Unit handle that task.