Editor’s Note: Civil Beat invited Keith Kaneshiro to respond to Peter Carlisle’s Nov. 12 column on the day it was published. Here is that response, written by Kaneshiro’s spokesman, Dave Koga.

Peter Carlisle is certainly entitled to his many opinions, but his Nov. 12 column, in which he calls for Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro’s ouster at the polls in 2016, is a mess of misinformation, cheap shots and manufactured outrage.

The record needs to be set straight.

Former Honolulu Mayor Peter Carlisle was Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney from 1996 to 2010.

Nathan Eagle/Civil Beat

Carlisle frames his argument on leadership styles, essentially berating Kaneshiro for not being Carlisle.

He calls Kaneshiro a “desk jockey,” even though he knows that Kaneshiro is an experienced and accomplished trial lawyer with well over 50 convictions for crimes such as murder, bribery, computer fraud and sex assault.

In contrast, Carlisle trumpets his “lead from the front” philosophy of personally taking high-publicity cases to trial and boasts that the prosecutor’s office was “a well-oiled machine” when he left to pursue loftier political ambitions.

Sadly, the truth is that while he was busy leading from the front, he lost sight of what was happening in the rear.

For example, when Kaneshiro returned to office in 2010, he found a backlog of more than 2,300 outstanding felony bench warrants.

There was also a box containing 1,000 unserved penal summonses in the office of one of Carlisle’s investigators.

And then there was Carlisle’s bad check restitution program, which allowed a mainland debt collection company to use the seal of the Honolulu prosecutor’s office on letters that threatened people to pay up or be taken to court.

But the most troubling discovery was that a deputy had allowed the statute of limitations to expire on 20 sex assault cases without charging them. Because the deputy did not enter the cases into the case tracking systems, no one knew they existed until the deputy’s office was cleared out.

This is how a well-oiled machine functions?

The Rave-Promoting Deputy Prosecutor

And yet, based upon his participation in a flawed television news story, here is Carlisle, castigating Kaneshiro for “(tolerating) a deputy on his staff who suffered a prior DUI conviction and apparently until recently was promoting ‘raves.’ ”

The truth behind the story is that it originally was to be built on leaked – and erroneous – information that a woman died of a drug overdose at the Hawaii Love Festival in September at Kakaako Waterfront Park and that deputy prosecutor Jon Riki Karamatsu was the promoter of the event.

Neither was true, but the story ran anyway, now packaged to imply that Karamatsu was involved in a high-risk, drug- and alcohol-fueled rave. It was a tenuous premise at best, with the reporter trying to salvage the story by actually saying, “No one died at the Love Festival, but there have been deaths at other (electronic dance music) events.”

No one denies the dangerous elements of the rave culture, but Carlisle’s characterization of Karamatsu as a promoter of raves is wrong and his righteous indignation is hypocritical.

Karamatsu’s involvement was a one-time thing. He was a consultant to the promoter, a friend of his, and his job was to increase security at the event. Yes, it showed poor judgment, if only because of perception, but Karamatsu did nothing illegal. When Kaneshiro learned of Karamatsu’s involvement, Karamatsu was told not to do it again.

What’s more, the Hawaii Love Festival, which has been held on Oahu for 16 years in a row, received an operating permit from the Hawaii Community Development Authority and approval to sell liquor from the Honolulu Liquor Commission, now headed by Don Pacarro, Carlisle’s handpicked would-be successor.

If Carlisle is going to invoke outrage, he needs to tell us what differentiates a deputy prosecutor who acts as a one-time consultant to the festival from the state and city agencies that allow the event to be held every year. And how in the world does this even remotely compare with tolerating a deputy who sits on 20 sex assault cases without charging them?

The Flawed Case Management System

Carlisle also embarks on a lengthy hearsay diatribe about the office’s newly installed case management system, and we will get to a detailed rebuttal because of the sheer amount of misinformation he spreads.

First, it is important to point out one very critical reason why a new case management system was needed in the first place.

When Kaneshiro returned to office, the Carlisle staffer with sole responsibility for and custody of the existing case tracking systems left to work in the mayor’s office. He claimed that the city’s Department of Information Technology took custody of his PC and reinitialized its hard drive, destroying the only copies of the three major software code modules that comprised the systems.

Finding it difficult to believe that any programmer would not have external backups, Kaneshiro made repeated requests for the source codes, but they were never turned over.

Without the source codes, the office was vulnerable to a catastrophic interruption of service in the event of a software crash and also unable to make any repairs or updates to the systems.

As to Carlisle’s statements about alleged problems with the new case management system:

• “I’ve been informed it is cumbersome, not user-friendly, slow, some days breaks down or freezes multiple times in a day.”

Like any new computer system implementation, there were challenges due to a combination of servers, networks and databases requiring performance tuning. Most of these issues have been resolved. The system does not freeze. There has been a problem with the speed of the Internet latency which delivers data between the office and the data center, but that will be solved soon when the data center is moved from the Midwest to the West Coast.

• “I’m told it has replaced all the other case-tracking systems the office used to have.”

You know one reason why. Most importantly, the existing systems no longer met the needs of the office. Rather than multiple systems that do not share information, the office now has a single system for all data. This simplifies training, eliminates redundant data entry and increases efficiency.

• “Kaneshiro went to the City Council in 2012, got $325,000 for a case-tracking system. Money expended is now close to $1 million.”

The cost for the first year of the contract, which was reviewed and approved by the city council, totaled $940,471. This included 250 software licenses, installation, professional services, training, customization and annual support services. Years 2 through 5 of the contract are for support and hosting services and total $145,207 annually. This includes two software upgrades a year, which average more than 200 enhancements to the system.

• “One computer expert was contract-hired to do groundwork and get the system ready; then a second computer expert was hired in 2013. The system … was so difficult and problematic that a third computer expert was hired in 2014; then a volunteer was added.”

The first “computer expert” was hired in 2012 to document the requirements for the new case management system, develop the RFP, manage the procurement process and serve as project manager. The second “computer expert” was hired in 2013 to develop the training plan for employees, analyze and facilitate the business process changes and be the on-site system administrator. The third “computer expert” was hired in 2014 to deploy and maintain 200 high-speed desktop scanners along with the associated hardware. The volunteer Carlisle refers to is an IT major at a local college who was invited to serve as an intern to learn how to develop document templates. None of these individuals was hired because of any escalation of issues; they were hired methodically and for specific purposes.

• “The reason I say this better not be true is because it would be the second time Kaneshiro poured a bunch of money into a computer system that flops. When I first walked into the door as the elected Prosecutor, I discovered Kaneshiro had been talked into purchasing an exceedingly expensive inadequate computer system that never did what it was supposed to do.”

You would expect Carlisle to be familiar with the city’s procurement process. A former mayor should know that a prosecutor cannot be “talked” into purchasing a computer system. The city requires that an RFP be drafted and posted to solicit proposals from qualified vendors. The proposals then go before an evaluation committee of individuals with subject matter expertise in the purchase and an independent observer from the Purchasing Department. The head of the agency, in this case the prosecutor, is implicitly excluded from the process. The committee selects the winning vendor and awards the contract. During the entire process, the prosecutor has no involvement.

• “As the saying goes, garbage in garbage out. With this system I was told you can put in as much garbage and whatever else you want in because nothing comes out.”

If Carlisle thinks case information is garbage then he is totally accurate. PbK stores a tremendous amount of information that was not possible with the old systems. It can store information on a defendant, co-defendants, victims, witness profiles, charges, court dockets, restitution, evidence tracking, case documents, investigative services and much more.

What Carlisle is completely misinformed about is that “nothing comes out.” The fact is that PbK can produce over 100 reports and queries, and is enhanced by a power search function similar to a Google search that can find all matches to keywords and identify all related persons, cases and documents.

The Leadership Style

As we said at the outset, Peter Carlisle is certainly entitled to his opinions. One would only hope that a former prosecutor and mayor would understand that opinions are not facts and that political discourse should never be a pretense for spreading mistruths.

Leading from the front may win you headlines. But it is hollow praise if personal glory is the goal and all the talk, talk, talk about the “well-oiled machine” you left behind can’t stand up to scrutiny.

As to leadership styles, Keith Kaneshiro has always believed that a prosecutor must do more than take cases to trial. To him, the job isn’t about seeking attention but making sure he does all he can to enhance the office’s capabilities.

For example, because he sought help from the Legislature, by the time he left office, the state was funding 12 deputies, one investigator and six support staff in the Career Criminal Unit and seven counselors and four support staff in the Victim Witness Program.

When he returned, because Carlisle did not seek continued help, the state funded zero deputies, zero investigators and four support staff in the CCU and one counselor and half a support position in the VW program.

This may not be the stuff of headlines, but it has a real impact on public safety.

So, too, will the Honolulu Family Justice Center. Kaneshiro acquired $6 million from the City Council to purchase a 20-unit apartment that will provide consolidated services and first-of-its-kind transitional housing so victims of domestic violence can truly break away from their abusers.

Strangely, Carlisle called the Family Justice Center a priority in both of his State of the City addresses but eliminated any budget requests from the prosecutor’s office for the project.

Carlisle clearly admires the late Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf, and perhaps even sees a little bit of himself in the straight-talking commander who famously led from the front in Operation Desert Storm.

He gleefully applies the following Schwartzkopf quote to Kaneshiro: “As for Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he is a great military man.”

But as we can see, Carlisle is no Schwartzkopf.

We would remind him that the general also said: “Do what is right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good.”