Police museum showcases artifacts, photos

More than 150 years of Honolulu Police Department history is chronicled in a little-known museum on the ground floor of HPD’s headquarters in downtown Honolulu. The museum is small in size but rich in content: There are weapons, holsters and handcuffs; uniforms, motorcycles and wire devices; portable radios, tear gas launchers and cockfighting paraphernalia.

In total, the Honolulu Police Department Museum showcases hundreds of artifacts, photos and documents, all neatly and methodically arranged. A leisurely visit could take a few hours, and if you’re lucky, retired HPD officer Eddie Croom will be your guide.

No one knows more about the exhibits than Croom because the museum has been his labor of love for nearly 20 years. It all began in 1997 when he read “The Honolulu Police Department: A Brief History,” by Leon Straus, a 30-year HPD veteran who retired in 1964 as assistant police chief.

“The book outlined the history of law enforcement in Hawaii, beginning with Kamehameha I,” said Croom, who retired in 2010. “After reading it I thought it would be great to have a place where people could come and learn about that. It wouldn’t be just a mishmash of things, but a real, well-organized museum.”

HPD’s new headquarters had opened in October 1992 with a hall designated for exhibits. Large glass cases were filled with things, primarily guns and knives, but they didn’t have any order or explanations.

Then-Police Chief Michael Nakamura gave Croom approval to transform the space, albeit with no budget. Undeterred, Croom began sorting items and sketching plans for each case in his spare time. He wrote informative descriptions based on hours of research and combed swap meets and HPD’s archives and storage rooms for additional memorabilia. As word spread about the project, exhibit donations began coming in, mostly from retired and active-duty officers and their families.

Today the museum is a noteworthy tribute to both HPD and Croom’s dedication. Since there isn’t enough room to display everything in the collection, hundreds of artifacts are in storage. Croom periodically swaps pieces to keep the exhibits fresh.

Highlights include badges dating from 1898 to 1952, the year the current design was introduced. It incorporates elements of the Hawaiian coat of arms, which was adopted in 1845 during Kamehameha III’s reign. The puloulou (kapu stick) signifies authority and protection; the alternating eight red, white and blue stripes of the Hawaiian flag represent the eight largest islands; and the two crossed paddles recall the Law of the Splintered Paddle (bit.ly/29VugqS), which Kamehameha I initiated around 1797 to defend travelers from unprovoked attacks.

Don’t miss the handmade pistol that was found in an inmate’s cell at Oahu Prison (now Oahu Community Correctional Center) during a routine inspection in 1965. At the time, prisoners were making batons for HPD officers in woodworking classes. The clever inmate carved wood from there in the shape of a gun and wrapped it with black electrician’s tape.

“He somehow obtained the large end of a car antenna, which became the barrel for a 22-caliber round,” Croom said. “He made the firing hammer in the prison’s metal shop, got a rubber band and attached it to the hammer to fire the gun. It could shoot only one round at a time, but it worked!”

Also of interest is a crime scene investigation kit from 1944. The large case contains scissors, grease pencils, evidence tags, test tubes, eyedroppers, bottles of chemicals and other tools and materials that forensic scientists back then needed to run tests in the field.

“It’s essentially a self-contained mobile lab that enabled them to get fingerprints, blood samples and so on,” Croom said. “Today you don’t need an ID tech to analyze every crime scene; for minor nonfelony crimes, officers can collect evidence and forward it to the lab here at headquarters for examination.”

One of the most intriguing aspects about the museum isn’t tangible (bit.ly/2aiJrxF). From the time Croom started developing the museum, he has felt a presence there, and strange things have happened.

He once found a mannequin standing on its head after a three-day weekend. Some visitors have felt someone breathing on their necks, but when they’ve turned around no one was there. Others have seen mannequins blinking and raising a hand.

“Remember, everything in the museum previously belonged to someone, and most of those people have passed away,” Croom said. “It makes sense that their spirits are connected to their possessions. Never have any of the incidents caused damage or injury. The spirits are just mischievous and curious about who has come to visit, and it’s their way of saying hello.”

DID YOU KNOW?

>> Honolulu’s first mounted patrol was in service from 1895 to the 1930s. It was revived as a pilot program in 1999, became official in 2002 and was active for six years. Like the 11 dogs in HPD’s K-9 Unit, which detect drugs, bombs and corpses, the horses were deputized. Their badges are on view in an exhibit devoted to the mounted unit.

>> Look for the photo of John A. Burns, who began his HPD career in 1934. Early in 1941 he became head of the Espionage Bureau and was tasked with evaluating the loyalty of Hawaii’s Japanese residents. Burns left HPD by the end of World War II to enter politics. In 1962 he was elected the state’s second governor due, in part, to support from the Japanese community.

>> Kam Fong was cast as Detective Chin Ho Kelly in the original “Hawaii Five-O” TV series, which aired from 1968 to 1980. Prior to becoming an actor, he was with HPD for 16 years. A 1953 photo shows Fong in uniform, standing among fellow officers.

>> The museum displays several HPD “firsts,” including its first official uniform (dating back to 1932), its first type of motorcycle (1938), its first “drunkometer,” or breath-testing equipment (1938), and its first polygraph machine (1948).

Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi is a Honolulu-based freelance writer whose travel features for the Star-Advertiser have won several Society of American Travel Writers awards.