Closest thing to becoming a real superhero.

#policeofficers, #policetraining, #lawenforcement, #police, #communitypolicing, #problemsolving

George Floyd’s death, Tyre Nichols. The demand for change is clear. Our government officials, our law enforcement agencies, and our citizens are hurting over the continued deaths from excessive force over the years. Whether or not law enforcement agencies across the nation continue to update use of force curriculum to reduce excessive force and adjust hiring criteria to weed out applicants who show indicators of potential brutal behavior, the bottom line is that officers making arrests are responsible for using force objectively and not excessively. They must answer for their actions and pay the consequences.

When I entered police recruit training for the Hawai?i Police Department in December of 1990, I held the ideal that my purpose was to help my community, to protect and to serve. I believed that I could make things better. As corny as this sounds, I believed that becoming a law enforcement officer, or any first responder was the closest thing you can do to becoming a real superhero.?So, I did my best in recruit class. I studied the law, memorized department procedures, trained and kept myself in relatively good physical shape.?I wanted to be an expert in policing. In 1991, while I was still in police recruit training the Rodney King incident occurred. Our training instructors, Sergeant Jay Enanoria and Officer Wayne Hisashima showed the news accounts of the event. I thought to myself, how do officers get to that point???Will I ever get to an arrest situation that escalates to this level? I wanted to be good at arrests, ensuring that I can handle myself without being excessive. I tried to perfect the arrest control techniques and defensive tactics taught to me in what our department called at that time “weaponless defense”.?In 1992 I became a baton instructor and in 1993 an OC Spray instructor.

But while I was maintaining my physical fitness to ensure I could face any dangerous situation and use force appropriately; it was not enough.?Why??Because although I continued to train and stayed in relatively good physical shape, my mental state of being was going down a dark road.??

It was sometime around the end of 1992 or beginning of 1993 when I began to develop my paradigm of what the world was. This world was not a rated “G” or “PG” family superhero movie or cartoon. It was a darker world. A world of constant exposure to violent crime, domestic violence, and drug abuse that greatly influenced my idea of human nature. I arrested repeat criminal offenders over and over. Drug abusers, drug dealers, thieves, perpetrators of domestic violence, and other violent offenders who continued to revolve in an out of jail. On one Superbowl Sunday, I came up on a scene where two brothers got into a fight over the game, one almost killed the other. If the Emergency Medical Technicians didn’t arrive when they did, the brother would have died. I got tired of seeing the same people do the same criminal things over and over. When a suspect didn’t listen, I sometimes would take it personally. When a suspect ran away, I interpreted that action as a direct challenge and disrespect to me. In addition, the continued exposure of criticism from relatively law-abiding citizens began to frustrate me enough to avoid social events. During these events, one or more persons who found out that I was a cop would eventually come up and start accusing or questioning me about police work. “Police do not do enough.” “Why didn’t they arrest that guy the other night at the… fill in the blank” “Why did it take 5 cops to arrest one guy?” “Why did the cops take so long to respond when I called 911?”

I’ve also seen the disgusted look on a person’s face during routine traffic stops. “Hey officer, don’t you have better things to do than giving me a ticket?”?“Hey officer, why are you giving me a seatbelt citation when you should be arresting the drug dealers in downtown?” You get the idea, my fellow alumni in blue could come up with additional phrases that they heard on and off duty that degrade officers and their chosen profession. And while not every interaction I had with the public was this way, there were many. I assumed other patrol officers experienced similar interactions. Some days were better than others. But some days were worse. The intensity of this exposure led me to the point where I became indifferent to the ideals that I had when I entered the police recruit class in December of 1990. Especially when the prosecutors would decide not to prosecute a case, or when a judge imposed a lenient sentence on the person I arrested. In addition, continued exposure, sometimes up to twelve or sixteen hours of work, depending on how many extra officers were needed during shortages, only reinforced my belief that I lived in a dark world. I contemplated on the philosophy of “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six”. For you citizens who are not familiar with the meaning behind this phrase, it means that it is better for you to end up in court for your use of force and let a jury decide on whether the force you used was excessive rather than to hesitate, get killed, and be carried by six pallbearers at your own funeral. The idea becomes ingrained.?I was unaware of what was happening to me. I believed that this was just how it was.?

During these early years, as a police officer, my interaction with other police officers across the state and sharing our experiences only validated my assumption that all police officers have similar experiences although varied in intensity. Some not as much as others, some experience extremes of this, depending on the small town, city, or county. However, the size of the town, city, or county doesn’t matter. I believe all officers will go through these mental challenges in some form and must deal with it. Some can see it for what it is, are resilient, and can bounce back. They succeed in not letting the dark side take them over. Others like me in my early years as a police officer, do not know and are not aware of what’s happening to them, and it may be too late. I believed that nobody else could relate to my experiences except other officers. This feeling created in me a feeling of exclusivity; We police were not like the rest of the public. The public could never understand what I do, and because I am not like them, I need to stay close to my “police brethren”. I became part of a close-knit community of police officers with a certain level of distrust of those outside of that community.?

And while I was going down that dark road for those initial few years, I was fortunate to have experienced an event that caused deep self-reflection that made me think on my behavior and actions. That event changed me and my paradigm. I can’t remember the exact date, but I believe it was at the end of 1993 or beginning of 1994. It happened during third watch on a Friday or Saturday evening. Hilo patrol were two steps behind a couple of young women who were shoplifting retail establishments across of Hilo, Hawai?i. The calls started coming into police dispatch soon as the shift started and continued every so many hours. During the last half of the shift, a call came in from dispatch that the floorwalkers (loss prevention officers) of Liberty House (now Macy’s) in the Prince Kuhio Plaza had caught one of the girls. One of the suspects was described as a young Asian female around 5 foot tall between 17-23 years old with long black hair around a hundred pounds or so. Alston Kimura, an officer on my watch called into dispatch shortly after over the police radio and stated that he had discovered the suspect’s car in the parking lot of Prince Kuhio Plaza. I responded as back-up for Alston.?

When I arrived about five minutes later, Alston was shining his mag light through the window of the car to the backseat where stacks of brand-new women’s blouses and jeans still with the retail price tags on them were in open view. A young Asian woman standing nervously next to the suspects’ car fit the suspect’s description while Alston looked through the windows.?I approached her and snapped, “What is your name!” She didn’t answer, and she looked at me in fear.?I continued, “Is this your car!” She froze and did not respond. She looked as if she was about to cry.?Alston then turned to me and calmly stated, “Oh, she’s a witness, not a suspect.”?I cannot fully describe what came over me at that time except embarrassment of my treatment of her. I regretted my actions and I immediately apologized and stated to her that I was sorry and that I thought she was one of the shoplifters. She relaxed her shoulders, put her hands to her chest and sighed, “Oh… you made me so scared when you asked me those questions, I didn’t know what to say.” I apologized again. She was so gracious in her understanding that it made me feel worse for my actions.?

That night I considered my actions. And while the term unconscious bias was not used back in 1994, my behavior at that time was unconscious bias. I realized that I assumed something that was not true of this female. I also realized that I made this assumption because of my daily experience of the dark side of law enforcement. When I observed that young female, I automatically assumed she was the young Asian female shoplifter. As I continued to ponder how wrong I was about this young female over the weeks, I realized that not everyone I see who matches a suspect description will be the suspect in question. I also realized that even if someone is a suspect, I shouldn’t be treating them with the confrontational methods I taught myself to use as a psychological defense mechanism to gain control of a situation and show dominance and authority. I decided that I must change. Thereafter, I forced myself to think differently. To understand that not every criminal action was done to spite me. I also began to see people in a different way. That although some may seem to be mean and disrespectful by criticizing me, it was because they have gone through some trauma that was unresolved. For repeat offenders, they need someone else to blame like the police because it’s difficult for them to take responsibility for their actions. They blame everyone else.?For the law-abiding citizen who lashes out at a police officer, the police might have been the only hope they had to resolve a conflict and they believed that the police let them down. I started to speak with criminal offenders humanely, despite their crimes. I still gave citations; I still made arrests. I still had to use force. However, I didn’t take the resistance of those I arrested, or the derogatory and belligerent comments personally. I tried to respond back calmly as best as I could and sometimes it calmed suspects and even some victims who believed that their world had just fallen apart. I was able to control my use of force so I would not excessively use it. Not because I was trained in perfect arrest control techniques, but because I mentally trained myself to be objective and self-aware when using those techniques. I tried to have empathy to law-abiding citizens. I tried my best to practice the golden rule to everyone; “Treat others as you would want them to treat you.” Not just some others. But all others. Treat everyone, to include suspects and criminals, with dignity and respect. Even during the most dangerous or confrontational situations I tried my best. It was a difficult, long, and slow process, but as I continued to gain situational awareness of my world, my anger was less, my stress was less, and I came home happier and less disgruntled.??

In the fall of 1995, I became a community policing officer. I was assigned to a shoreline beach area known as Keaukaha.?Working with the community, understanding their issues, their misunderstanding of the law and police work, and their desire for a safer community broadened my worldview.?Working to solve problems and execute problem-oriented policing to reduce crime improved my ability to be objective.?In 1997 I was assigned to Downtown Hilo with Officer Randy Apele as my partner. Drug users, drug dealers, and prostitutes would do their business in the area.?We continued to practice problem-oriented policing and respectfully enforced the law. I could feel that I was continuing to change for the better, despite the environment I was exposed to. The criminal element also noticed that my partner Randy and I were firm and would not hesitate to arrest for violations of the law, as well as seek out and arrest those who had warrants, but most understood that we were fair and respectful. We were consistent in our actions, and we also treated everyone as humans; not yelling at them or making derogatory comments. We weren’t perfect. But we tried our best to be. I still got angry at times, but I was far away from the dark side as any officer could be.

On one occasion a guy walked into Randy and I in Downtown Hilo in the halls of the Kilauea Hotel. He was holding a crystal meth pipe in his hands while trying to light it up.?We knew him. He knew us. We previously arrested him on several occasions for warrants and other offenses. He gave a welcome greeting “Howzit guys?” while trying to light up his pipe. We didn’t yell at him. We simply asked. "Why are you trying to light up the pipe in front of us?” He had gotten familiar and comfortable with us in the area that when he saw us, he wasn’t thinking about the pipe in his hand.?He put his head and hands down and stated, “Ahh, I wasn't thinking, you got me.” He handed over the pipe, put his hands behind his back, and gave up. “Take me to jail” he said. He understood that we were doing our job and had a sense of respect for that. We in turn treated him humanely without lecturing, yelling, or calling him derogatory names. The arrest went smoothly. Our efforts and how we enforced the law did not take down any major crime ring. But we did help make the community safer. And the downtown merchants noticed it.?On one occasion we saw another repeat offender not doing any criminal activity but was working for a utility company directing traffic away from the construction site. Randy and I stopped walked up to him, asked him how he was doing and congratulated him on his job. He smiled at us and said, "I had to find something else better to do instead of getting arrested by you guys. I'm tired of going in and out of jail." It seemed that he was trying to begin a new way of life. During Hawai?i Police Department’s 1998-1999 fiscal year, Crime against persons, property, and minor nuisance complaints dropped in Downtown Hilo.?Not just because of Randy and I, but because of a total department wide and community effort. We just had a small part in it. And while our department and partnership with the community didn’t eliminate all crime, together we reduced it enough to make a difference. (Hawaii Police Department 1998-1999 Annual Report, Page 17).

By 1999 I finally felt the same way I did when I entered the police department. That I can make a difference. I felt like a superhero. On one occasion, while patrolling the streets of Downtown Hilo, I asked my partner, “Randy, do you know why we became cops?”?he smiled and jokingly responded, “No Moses, why did we become cops?” I responded, “Because it’s the closest thing you can be to becoming a real superhero.”?We both chuckled, and we went about our day.?I really felt that way.?By the fall of 1999, I was promoted to Police Sergeant and assigned as a detective in the HPD Criminal Intelligence Unit as an Internal Affairs Detective. I continued to try and understand what caused officers to use excessive force. I investigated use of force incidents and did what I could to try and educate new recruits on use of force.

In the fall of 2002, The Hawai?i County Police Chief position opened up.?I believed that I could do more to help police reach their full potential in the same way I did, so I applied for the position of police chief. In December 2002, The Hawai?i County Police Commission chose the next chief. I did not get the job.

In March 2003 the Hawai?i Army National Guard needed a full-time security plans and antiterrorism officer. So, I requested military leave to go on Active Duty. I ended up getting mobilized and deployed on two occasions for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Time went by quickly, and while I intended to get released from active duty and go back to the police department, I believed that I should continue my active-duty career in the Hawai?i Army National Guard, so in 2012 I officially resigned from the Hawai?i Police Department. I continued to work with Hawai?i Law Enforcement agencies within Hawai?i in my National Guard role until I retired.?

Once you’re a cop, you’re always a cop.?Therefore, I wrote this article considering the recent use of excessive force across our nation in hopes that those officers who read this can find in their own way the same self-actualization I did when I was working the beat. I also hope that the average citizen who reads this can see how an officer might go down a dark road and end up using excessive force. Not as an excuse for bad behavior, but to see the conditions that our police must work in. I am not na?ve to think that excessive use of force will be eliminated from police work. However, if just one or a few officers can take something from this article that will help them reach a point where they see what might be happening to them and help them decide to try to overcome the dark influences of their environment that leads to excessive force, then maybe those few officers will improve their ability to control their use of force so that it does not become excessive.?If so, this article was worth writing. After all, being a good police officer is what we all wanted to be when we entered law enforcement.?And being a good police officer is the closest thing you can be to becoming a real superhero.?