Ka Leo, the UH Manoa campus newspaper, has two stories this week worth noting.
A column by an anonymous author (“Witnessing violence? An HPD arrest“) recounts an incident in which he (I’m presuming a “he” based on the story) saw a young man running from police and tackled and held him until the police caught up.
Then the bad stuff happened.
As the first four police officers swarmed over the boy, I saw each of the cops throwing elbows into the boy’s back after he was already handcuffed, along with punches to his stomach. They hit him wherever they could except for the face. Still standing five feet away, I felt guilty because I stopped this person, thinking that I was doing the right thing.
One officer noticed that I was watching them beat the boy and stood in front of me to obstruct my view, but I was still able to see. As he did this, one of the officers beating the boy made eye contact with me and realized I was watching every move they made, at which point he began to scream, “Stop resisting!”
The boy was not resisting, and his hands were cuffed behind his back. By the time the officers caught up to us, the boy didn’t have enough energy to lift himself off the ground, let alone resist the four men pummeling his ribs and abdomen with their fists.
Within another couple minutes, two more officers came up and began repeatedly kicking the boy in the knee; I stopped counting after the first five kicks. I should have let the kid get away because no one deserves this kind of beating. I couldn’t take anymore and began to walk away from the six cop cars and 12 officers. As I left, I turned my head and saw one officer bending the boy’s right leg toward his buttocks, twisting his ankle outward as if he was going to snap it.
So who are the criminals here? I hope that Ka Leo will follow up and, at minimum, provide more details of the incident to the City Council and the Police Commission so that the incident can be investigated.
The second article is a short interview with UH President M.R.C. Greenwood (“Greenwood talks politics, athletics“).
What caught my eye here was Greenwood’s admission that it was a mistake to have been drawn directly into issues of athletics, which by NCAA rules are supposed to be in the control of the UH Manoa Chancellor.
Though Greenwood says she doesn’t have many regrets about her tenure at UH so far, one process that she wished she had handled differently was her role in the university’s move to the Mountain West Conference.
“Sometimes, you do something you think is okay, and it has reverberations you don’t expect,” Greenwood explained. “I really probably should have said no, but I was asked to do it at the time by the board leadership, so I did it.”
Though she eventually figured out the job, the president says that her involvement in the transition constituted an overstep of authority on her part.
“It confused the roles of the university’s president and the chancellor at M?noa with respect to athletics.”
Greenwood goes on to say bluntly that Division 1 athletics are a money loser, not only in Hawaii but across the country. Few of the athletic programs competing at this level are able to be self-supporting, and UH isn’t one of them.
“If we’re going to stay Division I for the future, the state’s going to have to help invest in it,” Greenwood told Ka Leo.
That’s a pretty direct message. Will anybody listen?
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I feel ill reading the account of police brutality. These are criminal acts! Does wearing a uniform give the police the right to such actions? Where is the oversight? The accountability?
Unfortunately, this kind of out of control criminal brutality is normal for the Honolulu Police Department. I’ve seen it on numerous occasions. They basically are the worst street gang around — and proud of it.
The Hawaii Civil Beat series is the first time I’ve seen some decent reporting on HPD’s disgraceful behavior. Never mind the well known corruption we don’t see every day.
Unfortunately, police work is a haven for bullies looking for affirmation they can’t earn on their own merits. Politics, too. I’m NOT saying all cops and politicians are bullies, but they are disproportionately represented in these vocations.
Do not call the police. Ever. They will not help you.
HPD gets a lot of “free passes” from the media. Of course we appreciate their good work. We do not have to sweep their failings or their “bad boys” under the rug. Sometimes people, including media, seem scared, as if we are in peril if there are any criticisms against cops. Unmonitored and unwatched law enforcement today will become tomorrows big problem. Good cops should be grabbing the bad eggs by the collar and keeping their own house clean.
Whatever happened to the=at chatter Hawaii cops were gonna conduct personality exams for recruits to weed out bullies?
Police misbehavior problems are rising statewide.
Commissions either are not equipped or not empowered to deal with abuse by those with badges.
We taxpayers pay the penalty for this abuse when victims have responsible counsel.
Wonderful piece of gossip mongering and stereotyping attacks based on an anonymous unsourced or corroborated report.
Corroborating details please? Date and location would allow a check of police record to see if this incident might have occurred. Please do not offer Lennay Kekua as a corroborating witness.
The witness says he walked outside at 12:30 am to “discover where the noise was headed”? That noisy muffler must have been on a very slow car or scooter?
He knew the “victim” was probably a criminal because he was being chased by several police officers who were over 50 yards away in the dark. This guy has great eyesight.
The witness tripped, then chased and knocked down, and then chased and tackled the “victim” before the police caught up with him? What is he, a martial arts expert? He certainly is braver than I am. Shouldn’t somebody contact Norm Chow?
Followed by anonymous reactions that pile on.
“this kind of out of control criminal brutality is normal for the Honolulu Police Department. I’ve seen it on numerous occasions.” And you did not report it to somebody? At least the Ka Leo article provides the official police behavior complaint channels, and you certainly could have sent in an anonymous complaint detailing what you had seen with all the relevant information.
My own encounters with the police over the years have shown them being professional in very stressful situations, including some where they were apprehending violent people.
“Do not call the police. Ever.” Really?
And Hugh, I respect you as one of the responsible posters on this blog, so I would appreciate a citation to back your statement that police misbehavior is rising. Especially since this is an allegation of Rodney King like brutality in the course of an arrest in a public place.
None of this is meant to indicate I have any tolerance for police misconduct, especially with regard to people they are taking into custody. It is just that we have been burned before by these kind of anonymous stories that are almost too good to be true.
well said, Lopaka43. making assumptions based on A SINGLE SOURCE leads to very foolish and incorrect conclusions. decent reporters know that or they do not last very long in the field. the fastest way to print bad information is to rely solely on one person. would you want a story written about you, based solely on the words of someone you got in a fight with????????
Can’t believe no one has weighed in on the issue of UH athletics. Should the university stay in Division I? If enough Koa supporters can muster up the funds to permit it, fine. But if you’re going to be reaching into my pocket to subsidize the glory of the Rainbow Warriors, forget it.
Greenwood should not be even involved under NCAA rules, which are seldom honored here or elsewhere. She, who cannot explain who writes checks, should be dishonored, fully.
Elsewhere she would be down the road as the failure she has proven to be during a terrible tenure.
I know a couple crooks and several cops. The only difference is the badge.
I agree with Lopaka, we need to step back and look at this report with a critical eye before we start piling on. It seems to me that we are all too willing to accept this anonymous account with no supporting facts. Is this what you call investigative journalism?
“Seek truth in real facts. Believe not without evidences”
First, we need to remember who Ka leo’s audience is. The average 20 something college student is just going to lap this stuff up.
Second, although I am aware that there are bad apples in the police department, I find it hard to believe that out of twelve officers there was not one, possibly a sergeant, who didn’t say OK guys, he’s down, that’s enough. And the two officers who arrived later, I also find it hard to believe that they would just spontaneously start kicking a guy with four other officers on top of him. Maybe I am naïve but I don’t see it.
Third, this witness who was so anxious to do his civic duty by tackling the “criminal” , did he file complaint on the incident? If not, why not? If he was so disgusted by the police brutality why not do something about it rather than hiding behind an anonymous article.
As for Greenwood, when I read her CV after the announcement of her selection I told my wife, this is a mistake. So far I have seen nothing to cause me to rethink that opinion.
I googled “police brutality by state” and this was one of the first websites I found.
http://www.city-data.com/forum/politics-other-controversies/831388-police-brutality-state.html
The highest reported misconduct rate by state is that of Vermont, with 29.3 cases per 1000 police officers.
The lowest reported misconduct rate by state is that of Hawaii, with 3.3 cases per 1000 police officers.
How does one explain these two extremes?
Vermont is 96% white. Also, Hawaii is richer than Vermont per capita and by medium family income. Politically, Vermont is Democratic, like Hawaii; unsurprisingly, neither Hawaii nor Vermont have the death penalty. The murder rate in Hawaii per 100,000 people in 2011 was 1.2; in Vermont, it was 1.3.
Any guesses?
One difference might be what is considered ‘misconduct’ or ‘brutality’. Another is the rate of reporting such incidents by the citizenry.
But even if Hawaii had a much less stringent definition of misconduct, and its citizens underreported police misconduct, it seems unlikely that Hawaii would be above average in its rates of police misconduct compared to other states. That’s how low Hawaii’s rates are.
One issue is inhibition through social control. For example, when a local police officer was asked by Civil Beat why there is so much less gun violence in Hawaii than in the rest of the US, he attributed it to habits of respect, like taking off one’s shoes before entering the houses of others. (E.g., no one walks on the grass at McKinley High School because that’s just the norm.) This is also what one finds in Europe, where there are strong social mores that serve to inhibit the population. (For example, in some parts of Europe it is perfectly legal to drink alcohol in public, but no one does it because … no one does it. If you want walk down the street drinking a beer, you won’t get arrested, but everybody will look at you like you’re a homeless man. It’s extremely effective social control.)
There was a PBS documentary on an Englishman hiking through Japan. Soon as he walked into a small town with his big backpack, he muttered to the camera, “Oh, God, it’s just like an English village. All eyes are upon the stranger….” So it’s also a small town thing.
But there is a price to be paid for such societal inhibitions, emotionally. The English and the Japanese pay that price, often terribly. And as famously innovative as the Japanese and English are, they might pay an economic price for their guardedness in terms of lost dynamism.
(The sociologist Norbert Elias historical work “The Civilizing Process” traces the rise of a system of social inhibitions that grew over centuries in Europe since the Dark Ages. Also see Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature” on the supposed gradual reduction of violence over the centuries.)