On Monday afternoon, in the thick of all that rain, there were blue lights all over town like beacons in the hazy gray.

It seemed like there were cops everywhere — directing drivers in areas where traffic lights weren’t working, assessing the threat of water pooling on major thoroughfares, helping yet another motorist who lost control in the downpour. Honolulu drivers don’t handle bad weather very well, and there was HPD in the rain and the mud, helping to keep folks safe.

That’s a large part of what police have to do — not the exciting shootout stuff, not the movie-style mastermind detective stuff, but feet-on-the-street stuff. Directing traffic in the rain. Responding to thefts long after the thieves have come and gone. Telling troublemakers to move along. Not glamorous, not thrilling, but essential to the flow of everyday life.

What must it be like to put on the uniform and go to work every day when there is so much chaos and dysfunction at the top? Acting Chief Cary Okimoto wanted to retire and walk away but now can’t because he’s the only one with enough guts and grit to stand at the helm while the whole ship roils. The weight of public opinion must feel heavy on every officer, yet the job has to be done and they’re the ones sworn to do it.

Maybe you’ve lived through something similar and can relate.

Maybe you worked at a company that went bankrupt or a restaurant that shut down. You went to work every day, even when you didn’t feel so hot, and you swear you worked hard and liked the job and liked your co-workers but somehow the failure of the business feels like a failure of your own.

Maybe you’ve been a student when the person at the head of the school is dragged off in some stinky scandal. Maybe for a time you don’t want to tell people where you went to school because of what they’d think. You wrote your papers and turned in assignments and slogged toward graduation while wondering when the time would come when you could claim your alma mater without people going, “Wow. Yikes.”

Or maybe you played your heart out on a losing team with a terrible coach.

Maybe you’re from a neighborhood where something big went down, and every time someone shakes their head and says something nasty about your hometown, you want to say, “But it’s not all like that. I’m not like that. People I know are not like that.”

Maybe you know people in the department, folks who always wanted to be cops for all the right reasons. Maybe you feel for them and wish for them to be judged by their own works and not by the scandals around them.

Despite the adage, one bad apple doesn’t always ruin the whole bunch. It can’t. If it did, we would have no one to help us when storms blow in.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.