Police corruption hits Paradise!

Can you believe it? But can you really?

Whenever police corruption comes up the apologists rush to defend, point out that it’s just a few bad apples, most cops are great. Yeah, they may look the other way, but who can blame them? Speaking out against the police doesn’t usually end well.

If we’re talking about good cops, who better to look to than Karen Kapua? She was named Kauai’s Officer of the Year in 2010, and, yeah, her husband, Irvil Kapua, resigned in the face of an FBI inquiry, but that shouldn’t reflect poorly on her. After all, hard working cop, just doing her job.

How would she be expected to know that her husband was moonlighting as protection for our local meth dealers? And you can’t hold her responsible for the campaign of harassment against the whistleblower, Darla Abbatiello, who turned him in. I mean, it cost the county $980,000, and she engaged in a years long online harassment campaign against people involved in the case (you’re not as anonymous on the internet as you think), but she’s a good apple, one of the best. Because these are our standards for police conduct.

Her efforts led to promotions, landing her a plum position as Vice Lieutenant, helping to clean up the streets of Kauai, protect us all from the awful purveyors of dope and depravity.

She was arrested earlier yesterday by the FBI, flown to Oahu, and indicted on charges of embezzling over $75,000 that had been seized from alleged drug dealers, with money laundering charges tacked on top to boot.

In her supervisory position she’s signed off on nearly every drug related arrest and seizure in the last five years, which means that if you’ve been arrested on Kauai in that time you need to go find a lawyer. Like, right now.