Little help from police
Little help from police
Every day, there are reports of break-ins in the greater Volcano area. Police are called and sometimes show up, sometimes not. Victims and witnesses call in reports and are told they have to sit at the crime scene until the police show up, or the dispatcher will cancel the report. We wait hour after hour, and when nothing happens, we call the police again only to be told they are busy.
The frequency of these house-clearing break-ins is driving people out of Volcano. These people are friends and solid citizens. We are being held hostage in our own homes, afraid to leave but for suffering the same fate.
Having been a member of Neighborhood Watch for nearly a decade here, my conclusion is that the police are at least insincere, and, at most … ? I don’t want to think about it.
One gesture of insincerity was a sign at the Cooper Center indicating it was a police substation. Everyone knew it was unpopulated. The sign was eventually removed.
I’ve sat through countless Neighborhood Watch meetings with and without our community policing officer and one with the county prosecutor, too. I’ve attended every full-brass meeting at Cooper Center (one recently), and although the police rattle off their direct phone numbers to the crowd and make a show of how open they are to calls, the session is neither recorded, nor are these phone numbers made available on paper. It turns into a well-orchestrated pep rally that leaves a bad aftertaste.
As long as I’ve been around, the police mantra has been: Puna, the size of Oahu, is serviced by 27 police officers, nine per shift. They respond to calls in pairs. The majority of the crime occurs in Puna makai, thus the relocation of the substation from Keaau to Pahoa. So what happens when they’re needed in Mountain View, Glenwood and Volcano?
For all the complaining we’ve done, nothing has changed, other than the addition of the pep rallies. The solution as I see it is not only quadrupling the Puna police force and adding a permanent substation in Volcano, populated by at least six officers per shift, but education and cultural integration of all races on the force — not just locals who one can only speculate are related to the criminals they are charged with bringing to justice.
Tom Young
Volcano
Rebuttal to letter
Please allow me to respond to Mr. Clayton Kua’s letter (Your Views, April 7) in which he took me to task at some length for using the word “ethnicity” to describe the Thirty Meter Telescope protesters who were blocking the Mauna Kea Access Road.
Mr. Kua’s letter was entitled, “Not an ethnic issue.” Mr. Kua is suffering from the common misapprehension that the word ethnicity refers solely to race/national origin. According to my dictionary, the first and preferred definition is, “pertaining to or characteristic of a people or group sharing a common or distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.”
So, Mr. Kua, would not ethnicity perfectly describe these protesters?
Don Weeks
Pahoa
Kenoi should explain
Mr. Ray Chaikin’s open letter to Billy Kenoi (Your Views, April 7) offered good advice.
Let me share my thoughts as I watched Mayor Kenoi’s TV interview. First, who else was with him in the bar besides the hostess? Was it a business associate who he wanted to lavish with entertainment? Was there a business transaction involved that might suggest a quid pro quo? Or, perhaps using the county credit card was a convenient way to hide outside companionship from the wife?
Finally, he clearly is not a skilled politician because he looked embarrassed and ill at ease. A really good politician would have better composure and a reasonable story explaining all.
Mayor Kenoi will surely be silently judged during the remainder of his term.
Elaine Munro
Hilo