Former KPD officer guilty of harassment
Saturday, May 26, 2018 12:05 am
LIHUE — A former Kauai Police Department officer was found guilty of stalking in Fifth Circuit Court on Wednesday.
According to reports, for about three weeks between March and April 2017, Damian Loo, who was assigned to the police cellblock, used video surveillance equipment to monitor a female employee as she came to work. The case was prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office.
By Sept. 15, Loo was indicted on the charges by a grand jury and charged with one count of harassment by stalking, a misdemeanor, and one count of use of computer stalking, a class C felony. Loo is no longer employed by KPD.
Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 16.
This issue was not resolved by chief for a year because he doesn’t police his own people. Do your job. Stop causing costs to taxpayers because you can’t do your job or quit. How much have the taxpayers paid since you became chief?
latearrival get your facts right before you make comments. KPD internal affairs promptly investigated this matter and took the case to County Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar who quickly declined prosecution, claiming there was insufficient evidence for the crime of Harassment by Stalking. Prosecutor Kollar came to that wrong conclusion without even bothering to speak to the victim. The Chief was then forced to ask the State Attorney General’s Office to look at the matter because he knew Mr. Kollar was wrong in his assessment of the law. The Department of the Attorney General agreed with the Chief, so they took the case to the grand jury who indicted Mr. Loo. Now a jury has found him guilty. It was not the Chief or KPD that dropped the ball on this one latearrival.
Thank you for the information Melinda. You would be more informed, as the transparency we, as regular citizens are not given, is still non-existent here.
From the outside it looks to me that the Internal Affairs unit is not accomplishing much and that the KPD is too dependent on outside assistance and that settlements/claims are high. When Chief Perry came on he promised a working IA unit and transparency. http://www.civilbeat.org/2013/04/18840-kauai-chief-officers-we-know-should-not-be-here-are-coming-back/
For instance, my questions are, was the supervisor of Loo given the opportunity to resolve the conflict first? Did the IA pass on all interviews and information to Kollar? Was the officer reprimanded and given written notice and put on leave or fined first? I don’t see any of this. You most likely did.
I understand that we will not see anything from the trial etc. , as regular citizens, but perception is everything when there is one article of the final result. Yes, private information is guaranteed by SHOPO I assume, during the investigation and maybe the writer of the article did not refer to the previous, but yes, this is what WE see.
I do see some perceived changes over the past few years (I can only gain from what is released sparingly) since Chief Perry, arrived but the expenses for settlements and costs to prosecute/settle, from my view seems high. How much did the citizens pay for this case? Since there is no basic report on the KPD website I can only gather this from news articles of settlements, paid leave, etc. Most communities have access to basic data of claims, with expenses, etc. for internal investigations (PI removed of course). WE get nothing! So, no we do not know what KPD is really doing to stop internal issues and you are privy, so yes, your opinion is appreciated, but incomplete. Kollar made an error… but was the previous basic procedure followed first before this expensive case? From my view, the answer is NO. Of course, just my opinion from my limited information.
Some easy researched COSTS: Perry/Carvalho Case, Begley Case, Abbatiello-Higa Case, Asher Case, Asher/Quibilan Case, Channing Tada/Wesley Perreir/Lawrence Stem (from my limited view these last three should have been handled internally and no costs applied for a court misdemeanor expense. I’m sure there are others that were afforded protection of release of PI that we will never know about… not even a basic data release of information of claims paid is provided us.
Thank you.