Chinatown building owners warned

By James Gonser
Advertiser Urban Honolulu Writer

Police have taken the first steps toward seizing two buildings on a Chinatown corner notorious for drug dealing.

Bob Au, owner of the Lei Fong Antique store, was among those taking part in a May 13 anti-drug rally in Chinatown. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

There have been more than 250 drug-related arrests at Mel's Videocade, the New Hana Hou Lounge and Paradise Lost in the past four years, police say. Last week they formally notified property owners Susan Kuwada and Robert and Audrey Au that the illegal activities are taking place on their properties, the first step toward seizing the buildings. The owners do not run the businesses, but lease space to them in their buildings.

"We are giving them a chance to work with us and clean it up," said Detective Stacey Kapeliela, with HPD's narcotics/vice division. "Then, if they don't comply or cooperate, we are going to go straight with the forfeiture with the state nuisance-abatement law through the attorney general's office."

The new police tack was welcome news to Nu'uanu Merchants Association members, who recently banded together to fight back against drug dealers and users.

The state's Drug Nuisance Abatement Unit, created last July, has the authority to seek out drug houses and take legal action against their owners or residents. The intent is to clean out criminal activity in neighborhoods and is part of the state's war against drugs.

Deputy Attorney General Mark Miyahira said since its hot line opened last year, residents have called in more than 500 complaints about drug activity at 400 different properties statewide. All of them are being investigated, Miyahira said.

Miyahira would not say how many property seizures have been made or whether any of the sites besides the Nu'uanu building are commercial properties. But the number of cases that have reached the courts indicates that the forfeiture provision has been used sparingly thus far.

The Nuisance Abatement Unit completed its first case in February when a final court order was signed banning four people from a Kalihi home that was said to be a center of drug activity for years. A similar case is pending against two men over a house in Wahiawa, and an alleged Maui drug house became the third case filed by the unit in March.

Maui resident Susan Kuwada said she bought the property at 1102 Nu'uanu Ave. — home to the New Hana Hou Lounge and Mel's Videocade — last fall and had no knowledge of the drug dealing until she saw it for herself. Frightened by the experience, Kuwada said she will work with police to clean up the operation and save her investment.

"I see (with) my own eyes what's going on," said Kuwada, who stood in the shadows across the street from the New Hana Hou Lounge with a police officer this month and saw drug dealers operating in broad daylight. "They are so dangerous people. ... They intimidate the tenants."

Robert Au said he also supports ridding the area of drugs and dealers, even holding a sign during a May 13 anti-drug street demonstration organized by the Nu'uanu Merchants Association. His building at 26 N. Hotel St. was home to Paradise Lost for years before it closed recently.

Nu'uanu Avenue in Chinatown is part of Honolulu's first federal Weed and Seed crime-fighting district started in 1998. The program combines community efforts and tough legal penalties to "weed out" crime, then uses crime prevention, intervention, treatment and neighborhood revitalization to "seed" a safer community.

But the program has been unable to eliminate crime from the area, which police have called a "hotbed of drug use." Kapeliela said Paradise Lost closed down this month after a police raid resulted in several arrests. The bar owner gave up her liquor license, closed the doors and walked away, he said.

Police also recently made arrests at both Mel's and Hana Hou, he said.

Neither Hana Hou owner Youn Hee Lee nor her attorney, William Harrison, was available for comment. Lee has said she has tried to eliminate drug dealing inside her bar, but cannot control what happens out on the street.

Police say dealers sit inside her bar and wait for customers to drive up. After the deal, they go back inside and wait for the next customer.

Donal Bultman, the regional supervisor for Action Video, owner of Mel's Videocade, said he has hired extra employees to keep out drug dealers and users, throws out anyone suspected of having anything to do with drugs in the shop or video booths and has set up video cameras to record what goes on inside.

Bultman said with drugs being used openly on the streets less than a block from the police station, officers are not doing their jobs.

"We are willing to do anything we can short of closing down," said Bultman. "Police are not enforcing the laws."

Reach James Gonser at jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-2431.