The PBS NewsHour last night included a segment on the situation in Cincinnati, where a university police officer shot and killed a driver he had stopped on a minor traffic offense.

Two issues. Should university police be armed? A Washington Post column looked at the question this week (“Should college police officers be armed and challenging people off campus?“).

That’s a relevant question for us here in Honolulu, as there have apparently been ongoing discussions at some level of arming campus police at the University of Hawaii’s Manoa Campus.

Two years ago, then-Manoa Chancellor Tom Apple broached the subject publicly.

The chancellor also discussed the possibility of arming the proposed UH police, but stopped short of taking a stance on the issue, saying it would be best to leave the topic for further public discussion.

“If we’re going to have a police force with guns, they have to be every bit as well trained as HPD,” Apple said.

I’m not sure that “every bit as well trained as HPD” is really a going to provide a lot of comfort.

In any case, be aware that those discussions are still happening, and there are proponents of gun-toting campus cops.

Then there’s the sharp contrast between the approach to policing adopted in Cincinnati and that here in Honolulu. The brief NewsHour interview with Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell made that clear.

Chief Blackwell:

Policing in a big city in this nation is far different than policing on a university campus or in a rural community, especially a city like Cincinnati that understands the proper way to police. We place engagement high on our list over enforcement. We are engaged with our community. We believe in transparency and relationship and truth-telling….

“…First and foremost, we hope, in policing, every chief that I know hopes that they’re not sitting here talking to you about a riot in their city based on inappropriate police conduct.

But the other piece that I think the nation is really honed in on is that, if we do have police misconduct, we need to be held accountable for our actions. We have got to stop this shroud of secrecy around policing, and we have got to be truthful in our investigations on police officers.

That’s definitely a different approach to policing than has been practiced here, where protecting the “shroud of secrecy” has been given the highest priority, both in establishing the structure of oversight for HPD, and in operational practice.

On a different note, it looks like the issues raised by homelessness in Honolulu may be providing the first skirmishes in upcoming elections in 2016 and 2018.

Gov. Ige announces his “Leadership Team” to address the issue of the homeless this week (from the political point of view, I think it’s the homeless, rather than the condition of homelessness, that is seen as front and center). And within days, there were immediate public rifts between its members.

The governor said he did not intend to immediately clear the homeless encampment in Kakaako, saying the underlying issues have to be better understood.

According to Hawaii News Now:

According to Ige, there is no firm commitment to a specific deadline for removing the homeless people who are living there. The governor said aggressive enforcement without anywhere for people to go simply displaces them into other communities and doesn’t make sense until officials have a place to move the homeless to — including a temporary “safe zone” site or transitional and permanent housing.

Just one day after the governor’s press conference, the city came up with its own contradictory announcement.

No buildings or land have been found to accommodate people who will be removed from an expanding homeless encampment in Kakaako, but the city still plans to start clearing out occupants sometime next month, Managing Director Roy Amemiya told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in an exclusive interview Tuesday.

And the same day, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell announced that the city had dropped a plan to purchase the Hilo Hattie store in Honolulu for use as a transitional housing center.

As KITV reported:

Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration announced Tuesday it’s no longer pursuing the purchase of the Hilo Hattie store on Nimitz Highway as a transitional shelter for the homeless.

And then, a couple of days later, Council Chair Ernie Martin was calling out the mayor for having “thrown in the towel.”

According to Hawaii News Now:

Honolulu city council chairman Ernie Martin is clear he and other members of the council are not happy.

“I think the council’s perspective given the Mayor has thrown in the towel we will be working directly with the Governor to seek his leadership as to whether he’d be willing to get involved,” said Martin.

There have been rumors that Caldwell might use his base as mayor to launch a challenge to Gov. Ige’s reelection in 2018. But could Martin be looking to try to derail Caldwell’s own reelection next year?