LIHU‘E — One month and one week after taking office on December 3, the new Kaua‘i Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar said the staff is coming together more quickly than he expected. “So far it has been a very positive experience,”
LIHU‘E — One month and one week after taking office on December 3, the new Kaua‘i Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar said the staff is coming together more quickly than he expected.
“So far it has been a very positive experience,” Kollar said. “I love this job and I wake up every day excited to come to work. I owe that to the awesome staff that we have here and a supportive community.”
Kollar said a priority continues to be a high volume of property crimes, including thefts, burglaries, and car break-ins. He said many of the crimes are fueled by drug addiction.
“They tend not to be marijuana-related and are more often about prescription medications and crystal methamphetamine,” Kollar said.
Most of the crystal meth here does not originate on Kaua‘i, he said. Most of it is coming here in packages via boat or airplane.
“I don’t know of crystal meth currently being manufactured on Kaua‘i,” he said.
Because meth is cheap and concentrated, he said there are not adequate resources to maintaining security at the harbors and incoming freight shipments. He said a wise prioritization of resources would be to stop meth from coming onto the island and from keeping legal import of prescription medications from finding its way into the wrong hands.
“There has to be multi-pronged approach,” he said. “It’s not just one thing.”
Other priorities continue to be domestic violence, sex crimes, credit-card fraud, and firearms violations.
The prosecuting attorneys on all the islands work in partnership on a unified approach to law enforcement issues at the state legislature, Kollar said. They have been communicating prior to the Legislative Session to find common ground to prevent debate between them once a bill is in the hands of the Legislature.
“We don’t always agree but we try to prioritize as much as possible on the approach we want to take,” he said.
The former deputy county attorney and one-time Kaua‘i deputy prosecutor, said the transition of his administration has been smooth. He credited his staff of more than 30 attorneys, victim-witness counselors, legal clerks and administrative personnel.
They all present a variety of viewpoints and make his decision-making easier, he said.
“The staff is a wealth of really highly-qualified and passionate advocates and we are all committed to the same thing,” He said. “It is exciting to watch the team come together and see the tremendous amount of positive energy that we have in the office right now.”
The mission remains to run a transparent and accountable office that is responsible to the community and its concerns, Kollar said. The just outcome should be about the best way to achieve justice for the victim, the offender and for society.
In one case that may involve punishment and sentencing for the defendant, and in another it may involve restitution. Sometimes it may be about help and treatment to help an offender rejoin society, he added.
“That mission only gets complicated if we make it complicated,” he added.
Kollar said that it is definitely different as the prosecutor versus one of several deputies. He is charge of an entire office and a budget but relishes the few opportunities he has to be in court.
He said keeping an open mind is important because things change on a moment’s notice in court and requires he or his deputies to make a judgment call based on the new information and then back it up.
Two cases may have the same charges but there is something different about each one, he said. The characters involved, the circumstances, the victims, are all what makes make being prepared about being quick on your feet and able to respond to anything that comes up from defense attorneys, judges and the probation department.
The prosecuting attorney’s role is to be sure that the office is executing sound policy and making good decisions, Kollar said.
“If something goes wrong you take ownership for it, and you don’t throw your staff member under the bus or you don’t criticize somebody that is not in the room,” he said. “The buck does stop at my desk, and if something goes wrong, I’ve got to own the consequences.”
