ALCOHOL and hard drugs figure in most of the worst crimes in Honolulu including family violence. There is an often-fatal attraction to them. Their effect darkens the lives of many others. Progress in Honolulu’s
war against crimeValidating police statistics show the Laie district, where the Mormon church is strongly opposed to drugs and alcohol, has crime rates far below the rest of Oahu. More on Laie in a future column.
Police Chief Michael Nakamura has to live with the laws we have - alcohol legal, hard drugs illegal. Even though prohibition of alcohol was a national failure, he's sure legalization would worsen our hard-drug problem. Alcohol figures in more crimes than illegal drugs.
The chief has some successes to report:
Thanks largely to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and police roadblocks, alcohol is declining as a cause of traffic fatalities on Oahu - only 30 percent of 76 in 1996 as opposed to 43 percent of 70 in 1994. We have fallen below the national average.
If we could jail more property offenders and if there were more in-prison drug rehabilitation programs, property crimes would drop even more, he says.
Until then many thefts and burglaries go unpunished for lack of lock-up space. Police make an arrest, prosecutors get a conviction, then the public safety system turns the offender loose to save space for violent offenders. Some felons are on the loose after 40 or 50 arrests.
Nakamura thinks private prisons could help ease the tax burden of building more prison beds.We have about 2,670 spaces statewide today but 3,000 inmates.
The state recently added 50 low-security beds at Waiawa. It is seeking funds for 200 more. The chief thinks we need around 800 more beds than that. We would then be locking up about one person out of every 325 of us. Crime rates will drop, he is sure, when there is a stronger prospect of sure and swift punishment.
Cultural elements enter into crime. So does have vs. have-not anger. Police have to be sensitive to it, but most of all, Nakamura says, their job is to uphold the law.
Our rate of violent crime remains low compared to the rest of the nation's metropolitan areas, but a new element is alarming. Most homicides used to involve people who knew each other. They were relatively easy to solve.
Now 60 percent of our homicides involve strangers. They are much harder to solve. We lag the mainland East and West Coasts by five to 10 years in this trend, he says. We at least have their experience to draw on.
Citizen security patrols are helping in key areas. Waikiki now has evening patrols by English-speaking and Japanese-speaking volunteers with cellular phones. They can reach police quickly. Neighborhood security watches patrolling small areas have 46,000 volunteers signed up in 645 groups. Pearl City has one of the largest neighborhood operations.
WILL our parks ever again be safe at night? Nakamura hopes so. Ala Moana may even get a police substation.
What's this about the chief retiring? At 49 he's been chief for seven years and may be looking for new challenges just as he likes to rotate his deputies to keep them on their toes. But nothing is firm and he still likes being chief. What's more, he's a good one.