Ballard’s tree falls silently in woods

Honolulu’s chief of police tells the City Council that there just aren’t enough cops on the force to do what needs to be done and, therefore, some crime victims will be getting letters telling them that HPD is sorry but they’re not going to be investigating their case because they just can’t.

And what is the reaction?

Big shrug.

No angry crowds have gathered on the steps of Honolulu Hale. No Council members have stood to make impassioned speeches about the safety of our communities. The mayor was busy with other things.

Chief Susan Ballard drops this truth bomb and folks just nod and go about their business like it’s just another inconvenience of living in paradise. Rent is high, traffic is terrible and if your stuff gets jacked, oh, well.

If this revelation played out in a scene in “The Wire” — possibly the best cop-and-politician show ever written — every actor would get a sizzling monologue about what the decent folks of the community deserve:

“Enough to the crime which every day chokes more and more of the life out of our city! And the thing of it is, if we don’t take responsibility and step up, not just for the mistakes and the miscues but for whether or not we’re going to win this war for our streets, if that doesn’t happen, we’re going to lose these neighborhoods, and ultimately this city, forever.”

That was the speech that got fictional councilman Tom Carcetti elected mayor of Baltimore. In the non-fiction Honolulu, even all the candidates desperately looking to score easy points aren’t standing on a soapbox for the cops, nor for the community that needs more of them.

Maybe the non-reaction was because Ballard put into words what everyone has known or suspected all along: Crimes aren’t investigated in this town unless they rise to some level of importance, and the designation of “importance” is solely at the discretion of the police and is subject to factors including politics, visibility, media coverage, public outcry, and Who You Know.

Facebook-shaming and social media crowdsourcing have replaced actual investigating of burglaries and thefts, which are the crimes that touch thousands of families a year. The only property theft in recent years that got an aggressive investigation and speedy resolution involved a stolen Kahala mailbox.

Perhaps the non-reaction to Ballard’s news was due to confidence in the new chief. Ballard conveys both the practicality of a veteran cop and the hopeful vision of someone who worked hard for the top spot and who doesn’t see it as a plum position but as an actual challenge.

Ballard’s frank discussion of HPD’s big understaffing problem (250 vacancies out of 2,100 police positions, 100 vacancies among 500 civilian jobs) could mark a turn out of the darkness of the bad old days and into the light. It came in the context of presenting her priorities to the City Council. What was missing was the chorus of voices — politically motivated or otherwise — saying that this situation is unacceptable and that it will be fixed.

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