The recent reports of street toughs attacking and robbing visitors and residents alike in Waikiki almost…almost…makes me nostalgic for those bygone days of the Honolulu Police Department’s Metro squad.
Back when I was in high school in the 1960s, we would venture into Waikiki with friends looking for excitement. Waikiki was awash with young people, local and visitors, which drew us over from the other side of Diamond Head. We weren’t young toughs, just kids looking for some excitement, perhaps some underage drinking, some teen girls to meet, maybe a party at someone’s apartment, or on the beach.
And we definitely felt the presence of the Metro Squad. They were a fact of life.
If you heard someone shout the word, “Metro,” it was time to scatter.
We didn’t know anything then about Metro’s top buy at the time, Larry Mehau. That knowledge didn’t come until years later.
Metro was “four mokes in a car,” we would say, big local guys that would completely fill one of those unmarked 1960s muscle cars, ready to use their brawn to maintain the peace along the streets and alleys of Waikiki.
The memory sent me digging through old newspapers for references, and I quickly discovered that public fretting about Waikiki street crime is nothing new. It’s a recurring theme that surfaces periodically, causing money to be thrown at the problem for a while, then receding until a new high profile crime focuses attention again.
August 1946. “Street fights between civilians and servicemen were on the upswing, allegations were made that organized gangs roamed the city looking for trouble,” part of “the wave of hoodlumism” during and after WWII.
Kuhio Beach was one of the city’s two biggest hot spots, where “civilian-servicemen fights were prevalent….”
Honolulu Police Chief William Hoopai reinstituted the Metropolitan Squad” to confront street crime. “The squad’s policy is to give warning once, arrest the next time. If punches are preferred, they are willing to exchange them,” according to a news story at the time.
There was another “upsurge of hoodlumism” on Oahu in the mid-1950s, and the Metro Squad was again front and center.
“Its primary objective is to suppress outbreaks of violence caused by gangs of young toughs,” HPD said.
In 1960, there was again an outcry about “an outbreak of hoodlumism” in Waikiki.
“As many as seven Metro cars cruise the city each night….Each car carries three or four hand-picked men,” the Star-Bulletin reported. “Several men together can do a job where one man could not command the situation.”
That same year, Star-Bulletin writer Ray Maneki rode along with the Metro Squad through “the hoodlum-plagued Waikiki district.”
“Use legal force when force is necessary,” one police official was quoted at telling his squad.
Then in 1965, Star-Bulletin reporter Jim Becker described the Metro squad as “sort of shock troops in Aloha shirts.”
“They operate in plain clothes (mostly slacks and Aloha shirts), speak at least two languages (Pidgin and English), are built along the lines of large Stan Harringtons and have more guts than Taras Bulba,” Becker wrote.
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Hey Ian,
Please keep writing. You stopped at 1965 and have more decades to go. I was told by a long deceased Waikiki neighbor that once upon a time, Kalakaua Avenue was strictly high heels and skirts for women and coats and ties for men. And longtime locals around your age have also shared similar versions of the “Metro Squad” that align with the stories you share. These same local friends say Waikiki needs a return of the “Metro Squad”.
As a teen growing up in a rural part of the SF Bay Area, a trip to the “city” (San Francisco) was the ultimate escape to the big city. Sometimes it was a group of friends on a Greyhound bus, or a friend with a car. (Let me tell you, the Greyhound bus station in the Mission District was a trip for a teenager). But we roamed, we walked, and we ran, and generally tried to act older and tougher that we really were.
So every time I see wide-eyed local teens in Waikiki galivanting around, I am inclined to give them a free pass. Unless of course they are really up to no good, which seems to be a problem nowadays.
Hate to quibble but let’s remember that the Greyhound station in The City was at Seventh and Mission, actually in the South of Market area and not The Mission District, which really begins further south around 13th Street, Valencia Gardens, and Highway 101. World of difference, and often far less forgiving to wide-eyed kids from the hinterlands.
Remember well: big block solid lifter cam Impala, aloha shirt, “Get the f..k outa hea!
“Metro” reminds me of the LAPD’s legendary Hat Squad. And I think you mean Ray Maneki from the Star-Bulletin.
Thank you. I blame clumsy fingers for the Maneki typo.
Jim Becker — funny!
Cruise Waikiki was the best teen fun on Fri n Sat nights. Fill enough gas by scraping together $.25 to complete a couple of drive-by’s. One after-curfew night, Metro stopped my loaded Jeep, and escorted me into a bar to call my mom. Imposing guys who used their fear factor effectively.
Today, media and politicians are blaming visible homeless as the bad guys, when it’s repeat offenders who should be put on a deserted island to learn how to really survive.
An early Metro sergeant was a mainland football player, “Corky” Donahue, stranded here after Dec. 7th who joined the force — not to be confused with the later chief and City Councilman of the same name. Corky later rose to be captain of detectives and eventually joined N.C.I.S. here.
What you don’t say is what the underlying crimes are, and you leave the impression that this is nothing new. What is new is really violent crime; Murder, arson muggings. And the use of guns. Which ramps up the levels exponentially. This is new. Really new. I have lived in Waikiki since 2006. And I am scared now, where I wasn’t before. And I’m leaving out the hard drugs. Someone in comments said its not homeless but multiple offenders. A lot of the homeless are multiple offenders. You can distinguish between them. The virtuous homeless are merely sleep0ing on the street. The less virtuous are the ones yelling at staff in the Waikiki Health Center. I guess my underlying objection is it makes it appear the solution is a few big policemen cruising in a muscle carl. Boy have times changed
Nothing has really changed. Today, instead of the Metro Squad, you have the Crime Reduction Unit (CRU) and due to height requirements not as big, but they do have personnel you don’t mess with. Civil rights is another thing and homelessness has been with us from the beginning of time and whomever solves that problem is a genius.
Sadly, I think many of us in Honolulu are in serious denial about how unsafe Oahu has become. You always have to watch your back, wherever you are. Home invasions involving our elderly. Man set on fire in Chinatown in broad daylight. Security guard murdered by a blunt force object in broad daylight. Shooting after shooting after shooting. Murders happening with more frequency. I could go on, but need to go to bed.
The cherry on top is the absolute lunacy of wanting to make some crimes come with zero bail.