A soon to be “former” Star-Bulletin reporter added a bit more information on those hit by the latest layoffs in a comment left on a friend’s Facebook page, in which he describes these layoffs as involving practically the entire weekend field reporting staff, all three island bureaus, several copy editors, two biz reporters, a sports reporter, and possibly others.

That might intended more as a general impression of the cuts rather than a wholly accurate statement, or so I’m told.

There it was again last week, the “B” word. Brawl. And once again, it was downplayed or ignored by most of the media.

KGMB had the story on February 3..

Two brawls–and reports of gun shots from Salt Lake Shopping Center tonight. The first fight broke out around 5:00 p.m and the second brawl happened about two hours later. A group of teenagers reportedly chased another group of teenagers through the mall and fired shots down the road. No one was badly injured in the brawls, but witnesses were shaken.

KHON gave it a mention the next day.

An evening brawl at the Salt Lake Shopping Center may have been gang related, police say. One person was sent to the hospital last night. A witness says about 20 people and two vehicles were involved.

The pattern seem clear. For whatever reason, this disturbing series of fights involving large groups is being largely ignored. Follow-up reporting to make sense of it is almost nonexistent, as is reporting to hold public officials responsible for responding. Shouldn’t there be some public discussion of how to best respond to this obvious increase in gang related violence, including the appearance of home invasion robberies, drive by shootings, brawls in public places, etc? I would like to hear more than a sound bite from HPD, the city council, and the mayor. What’s going on and what are you doing about it?

Type “brawl” in the Google search bar on the top right of this page and you’ll get a list of earlier entries involving underreported and unanalyzed gang fights.

The media just aren’t doing their primary job of holding officials feet to the fire.

Back on the burglary front. We were just cooking dinner Saturday evening when an officer pulled into the driveway and asked if we could come to the Kahuku Police Station a little later to identify some items believed to have been recovered from our burglary.

So we delayed wine o’clock, rushed through dinner, and made the drive to Kahuku. We were escorted into the Squad Room where a swath of our stuff was spread out on a long table.

I was the big winner. My camera bag was the first thing I saw, then my Canon XTi and the Tokina ulta-wide lens that was on it when it was taken. Lens cap missing, otherwise intact and apparently in good order. Several compact flash memory cards. Other things that had been in the bag were gone, including the dividers that kept things separated, along with lens cleaning supplies, etc.

So that saves me at least $1,000 in replacement costs for the camera and lens. I’m happy.

Next to all this was stuff I hadn’t even noticed being gone–my old Pentax camera and several lenses. The camera has been broken for probably 20 years, and I just haven’t had the heart to dump it all. But our burglars somehow grabbed the old camera bag they were in from the top of a bookcase and thought they had another score.

None of Meda’s best jewelry was among the recovered items, including her collection of Ming’s. But she got back a number of meaningful items, including several of her grandfather’s pieces made from stones that he collected. There was a pair of small earrings my mother brought back from Thailand 20 years ago or so. Meda can chant back the origins of most of the recovered items.

Oh, well. We’re learning. You can continue to stress about what isn’t there, or you can learn to appreciate what you’ve managed to recover. We’re trying hard to stay in the latter zone.

Feline Friday was delayed again this week by the absence of a good cat camera. But I solved that at the end of the week with the arrival of a new Canon G10, the current iteration of the G9 which was taken by our burglars. So I’ll just declare this an honorary Feline Friday and share this batch of pictures.

Just click on Mr. Toby for more.