On Politics: Tough-on-crime initiatives come and go, but lawbreaking in Waikiki persists

Nothing catches your eye like a police report about “a sword-wielding 7-Eleven employee (who) allegedly severed a man’s hand and lacerated his abdomen.”

The report topped an August front-page Honolulu Star-Advertiser news update on crime in Waikiki. That case is proceeding through the court system, but the scourge of crime in Waikiki remains with us.

Today’s concern may be momentarily new, but crime in Waikiki is as common as a sunburn along Kuhio Beach.

Today it seems quaint, but in 1978 the reaction to repeated increases in Waikiki crime was to station Honolulu police officers to watch from Waikiki hotels.

They noted that thieves would sit next to an unsuspecting beachgoer, wait to see when he or she went for a dip, and then steal their belongings.

“The task force fights this by having officers watching the beach from hotel windows who call other officers on the beach by radio when they see such a theft,” according to a 1978 Honolulu Advertiser report. Not exactly “in your face” crime fighting, but there is little that hasn’t been tried.

The then-newly formed Waikiki Task Force, one of many such efforts, included cops in uniform, plainclothes officers, police dogs and police reserves.

At one time, crime fighting extended to a special 1980 task force dubbed the “Waikiki Hustle Task Force,” featuring city bureaucrats — including building, liquor and fire inspectors and finance department personnel and city attorneys — trumping down Kalakaua Avenue at night looking for “hustlers, hookers and street peddlers.”

The project came after a Honolulu Star-Bulletin report by former reporter and editor Stirling Morita detailed Waikiki violations.

“City managing director Edward Hirata reported that inspectors found numerous violations ‘ranging from building and zoning ordinances to liquor laws,’” Morita wrote, and Hirata said the city was “intensifying its level of enforcement.”

In 2022, the new effort is called “Safe and Sound Waikiki” and includes the guidance of Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Steve Alm and Hawaii Lodging & Tourism Association President and CEO Mufi Hannemann.

Officials including Mayor Rick Blangiardi and Police Chief Joe Logan are hoping to put together a Waikiki version of the “Weed and Seed” program that has been successful in keeping violators who are on probation from returning to their past criminal haunts.

“My concern is that when these individuals are released without probation, they are allowed to go back and commit the same crimes over and over again, without oversight,” Alm said in a Star-Advertiser story last month.

Waikiki has not lacked for catchy descriptions for its latest get-tough-on-crime campaign, and sadly, Waikiki has not lacked for reasons to bear down on the criminal element flourishing in the tourist mecca.

What hasn’t been realized is the concerted pressure from Waikiki’s own businesses and residents to demand a serious and sustained law enforcement presence that will not tolerate lawbreaking.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.