There was another incident in which Honolulu police shot two suspects under unfortunately familiar circumstances (Honolulu Advertiser, “Police shoot 2 in stolen car, capture both” or Hawaii News Now, “2 wounded in officer-involved shooting in Mililani“).

The incident drew little comment when reported.

However, two similar incidents that resulted in fatal shootings drew questions just a couple of years ago. In each of those cases, like in the latest one, police attempted to stop suspects who were driving, and when they tried to drive off, police fired.

Here’s what I wrote at that time (“Could Honolulu police have avoided recent shootings?“).

Clearly, it’s a dangerous kind of encounter. The data suggest that perhaps there are other ways to handle these situations that reduce the number of times they turn lethal. Do other major police departments have different approaches to these confrontations? Are there “best practices” that have yet to be adopted here? Could the shootings have been avoided?

Available data suggest that Honolulu has a higher incidence of police shootings, and a large fraction of those incidents involve the same circumstances in which police try to block a car driven by a suspect, who then is shot while attempted to break through the surrounding police.

Similar questions have been asked about police policy elsewhere. That post, for example, linked to a report by the Las Vegas Review-Journal (“Analysis: Many Las Vegas police shootings could have been avoided“).

Those questions continue to go unanswered by HPD. Perhaps the new members of the Police Commission should raise them anew.