HPD received my reports. The Commission on Judicial Conduct reported an insufficient-evidence disposition in 2023 and declined renewed review in 2025 under its former-judge jurisdiction rule. This article examines what those responses reveal, and which records are still needed to establish what each office reviewed.
The Hearing
The Nod gives the underlying December 2, 2022 courtroom account. The Loo overview holds the wider hearing and reporting history.
The Evidence in the File
The account below draws on police reports and my firsthand observations.
Police-report evidence (files not reproduced here): I reported the physical assault to HPD. HPD investigated and referred it to prosecutors. The report and referral files can independently corroborate what officers received and how the allegation was handled.
Firsthand testimony (my account): The defendant tried to run me down on PaaLaa Road. I reported the attack to HPD. Outside review would test the account through HPD records, witness testimony, location evidence, and any available video or dispatch records.
Firsthand testimony (my account): The defendant stalked and harassed me, including making references to my deceased parents. Separately, after February 2016 and before the July 2017 trial, while I was under indictment, Eugene Hartmann delivered a warning that I understood as an instruction to discontinue my investigation, and Rita Hartmann then said, “or you’ll be whacked.”
The later reporting history includes an online FBI report in spring 2021 and subsequent in-person FBI contact in Mokuleia, as described in the reporting chronology. I received no communicated investigative disposition, protective action, or merits resolution specifically addressing the Hartmann threat. Agency records could establish what followed those contacts. The separate post-2022 HPD reporting attempt is addressed under Law Enforcement. The Threat Report examines the original threat and the legal questions it raises.
Firsthand testimony (my account): Days before the December 2022 hearing, I overheard the defendant refer to a “federal buddy.” The meaning of the statement is unresolved. Witness testimony and communications records could establish whether it referred to an actual relationship and, if so, whether that relationship had any relevance to later events. Other people who heard the statement could establish its context. Federal protection would require testimony, communications records, or other direct evidence.
Deference to Official Status
Officials can defer to someone’s status without receiving an order or agreeing to protect them. That possibility needs to be tested against how they handled the evidence.
HPD personnel responded to reports about Judge Loo by calling him “honorable.” The intake records could establish whether that deference displaced review of the evidence.
The Unresolved Reports
Police received my reports. The Commission received my complaint. Their responses are set out below.
The cause of incomplete review or non-resolution remains unresolved. Intake and disposition records, jurisdictional decisions, sealed-file access records, and witness interviews could establish whether primary evidence was reviewed and why a matter was closed or left unresolved. No competing explanation receives automatic priority.
Law Enforcement
Firsthand account and identified report files: I filed multiple reports with the Honolulu Police Department regarding the defendant’s conduct, including the physical assault, the attempt to run me down, and the stalking campaign. Officers referenced in my account include Officer Brandt and Officer Shatoo.
My reporting covered the Starbucks assault and repeated vehicle threats between December 2021 and September 2022. I sent a cease-and-desist email on July 24 and submitted a TRO on September 16. The police records include reports 22-353421 and 22-365099. HPD advised me to avoid PaaLaa Road. I encountered the man while walking or cycling on main roads in Haleiwa; I was not seeking him out.
I identify Shatoo with the September 12, 2022 PaaLaa Road vehicle run-over attempt (report locator 22-353421) and Brandt with the September 20, 2022 Breakers / North Shore Marketplace harassment and alleged service-status deception event (report locator 22-365099). These are my officer identifications, to be checked against CAD/RMS and assignment records.
Officer Shatoo told me that service had occurred. Officer Brandt later gave me contradictory information about that same service status during the subsequent harassment sequence. I allege that Brandt knowingly gave me contrary service-status information rather than merely relaying administrative confusion. That is my allegation about Brandt’s state of mind, not an adjudicated finding. HPD service records, CAD/RMS entries, officer notes, body-camera footage, and related records can establish what each officer knew and what was represented. After 2022, Officer Brandt prevented another HPD officer from receiving my report about the Hartmann threat. This later intake event is distinct from the September 20, 2022 response; the later reporting account identifies the records to retrieve.
HPD investigated the Starbucks assault and referred it to prosecutors, as the reporting chronology records. None of my reports resulted in a prosecution of the defendant. For the other reports, the files could distinguish a decision against investigation from difficulties with corroboration, jurisdiction, resources, or other failures. I received no communicated merits disposition of the overall conduct I was reporting.
Hupe and Hill’s account of frontline discretion places individual decisions within overlapping governance and accountability relationships.1 That framework makes the distinctions between intake, investigation, prosecutor referral, and charging consequential: a decision at one stage can determine what information reaches the next institution.
Other articles in this series examine SHOPO arbitration and officer reinstatement, criticism of Police Commission oversight, and the Legislature’s creation of SIPD after federal corruption cases. Those records provide context for police accountability. My complaints require their own files and explanations.
The Commission on Judicial Conduct
Commission correspondence (on file with the author): The Commission’s March 13, 2025 letter reports an earlier “insufficient evidence” disposition dated March 22, 2023. It separately states that Loo was “no longer a per diem judge as of July 2024” and invokes Rule 8.2(b) and its 90-day former-judge jurisdictional window to decline the renewed complaint. The letter does not disclose the evidence examined for the 2023 disposition.
Public record (Hawaiʻi State Judiciary website, May 2025): The website listed Wilson M.N. Loo as an active First Circuit Per Diem Judge, after the Commission’s March 2025 letter stated that he had left service in July 2024.
The Procedural Gap
The audio-only recording and interrupted record statement left the visual allegation dependent on eyewitness evidence.
The police handling concerned conduct attributed to the redacted defendant; the judicial-oversight handling concerned Loo. These separate matters produced comparable limits on review and accountability. That comparison does not identify a common actor or establish a shared cause. The available explanations include coordination, inertia, conflict avoidance, evidentiary difficulty, and independent failures; direct evidence is required to choose among them.
The Oversight Failure
The Commission invoked the former-judge deadline to close my renewed complaint in 2025. But its reported 2023 disposition predates Loo’s departure. Rule 8.2(b) ties the deadline to when conduct is reported. Rule 8.2(c)(3) provides that resignation or retirement before or after an investigation or proceeding begins does not itself remove jurisdiction before final Supreme Court action. The earlier complaint and review file are needed to establish what conduct was already reported, what review occurred, and the basis for refusing renewed review.
My complaints entered official channels. The Commission reported a 2023 insufficient-evidence disposition and a 2025 jurisdictional closure, without describing what primary evidence it examined. HPD’s handling requires separate intake and disposition records.
What the Record Shows
Identified reports, author-held correspondence, and public listings:
- HPD report and referral files concerning the assault, not reproduced here
- Commission correspondence reporting the 2023 insufficient-evidence disposition and the 2025 Rule 8.2(b) closure
- May 2025 Hawaiʻi State Judiciary web listing describing Loo as active
Dependent on sealed records:
- Full audio of the December 2, 2022 hearing, including Loo’s interruption of my attempted statement for the record
Dependent on firsthand testimony:
- The non-verbal judicial signal to the defendant before the disputed sworn denial
- The attempted vehicular assault
- The broader 2021-2022 HPD report and TRO-service sequence involving the redacted witness; no prosecution resulted, and internal handling remains a records question
- The Hartmann threat
- The “federal buddy” statement
This matter has been referred to the DOJ Public Integrity Section, which acknowledged receipt of the complaint.
Successor reporting examines specific elements of this case in greater detail: The Two Questions addresses the evidentiary path to resolution. The Nod holds the canonical firsthand courtroom account. The Zero Commission documents the oversight body’s reviewability failure. The Paper Bag examines Hawaiʻi’s self-investigation model. Mechanisms of Review Failure supplies general vocabulary only; case evidence remains in the article-specific records and witness questions.
Records Needed
HPD intake, investigation, referral, and disposition records could establish what officers did with each report. Commission correspondence reports the 2023 insufficient-evidence disposition and the 2025 jurisdictional closure; the earlier complaint and review file could establish what evidence was considered and how the Commission treated the renewed complaint. Records of substantive review or a communicated decision would change the assessment of institutional handling. The event itself remains a separate question for the sealed file and eyewitnesses, as set out in The Nod.
Compare the written intake and service requirements with CAD/RMS histories, officer assignments, service returns, dispatch records, and supervisor notes. For each material decision, identify who made it, under what authority, what information that officer possessed, whether an undocumented intervention occurred, and what the next officer or reviewing institution actually received.
These files do not establish coordination between police and judicial oversight. Each office’s decisions need to be tested against its own records.
Sources and Notes
Peter Hupe and Michael Hill, Street-Level Bureaucracy and Public Accountability, Public Administration 85(2), 279–299 (2007). DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9299.2007.00650.x. Their framework concerns frontline discretion within governance and accountability relationships. (archival copy — institutional publication record and abstract) ↩︎