In a recent public address, Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard had some hard words for the Waikiki homeless (“Homelessness is No. 1 public safety issue in Waikiki, Honolulu police chief says,” Star-Advertiser March 29).

“We need to make Waikiki an unwelcome place for them to be,” she said, vowing to make the homeless who dared venture onto Waikiki’s streets, “uncomfortable.” This would be accomplished, of course, without “violating civil rights.”

Actually, this Visitor Public Safety Conference could more honestly have been called the Tourism Industry Safety Conference. After all, her audience was mostly tourism industry people and their government servants. And the real purpose of Ballard’s speech was to reassure these folks that their immense profits (the vast majority of which flow to stockholders overseas) would be safeguarded by the state: Any ragged, hungry people who might disturb a visitor’s notion of Hawaii as a paradise would be chased away.

This only confirms how deeply the tourism industry dictates life in today’s Hawaii, overwhelming our infrastructure, beaches and hiking trails and local restaurants, coffee shops and residential areas.

This kind of tourism is not sustainable, nor should it be sustained.

Noel Kent

Manoa

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