High crime rate? That's his fault!
Medicare going down the tubes? He's the culpable one!
It was an impressive display of world-class scapegoating.
The residents of Hawaii are used to a considerably lower caliber of excuses and justifications from their public servants. For example, just last week we heard two doozies of deflection, both concerning notorious cases on the Big Island:
Dead right. On Sept. 29, Carla Russell and her daughter, Rachele DeCambra, were shot to death in their Waiakea Uka home. The prime suspect is Russell's neighbor and ex-husband, Tetsuya Yamada, who was found on the property with a smoking shotgun. What a tragedy.
Even more tragic is that 19 days before the killings, Hilo District Judge Jeffrey Choi had issued a court document ordering Yamada, who was feuding with his ex-wife, to turn over all his weapons to Big Island police.
But no officer ever went to Yamada's house to follow up on the edict. In fact, Capt. Morton Carter, head of the island's Criminal Investigation Division, justified the lack of action by telling a Star-Bulletin reporter, "All it said in court was he (Yamada) was to turn the weapons over to us."
If it wasn't the police department's job to facilitate the court order, then whose responsibility was it to get the guns and bring them in? The judge's? The now dead petitioner's? Even more ridiculous, Yamada's?
This dereliction of duty is so funny that Russell's and DeCambra's next-of-kin will be laughing all the way to the lawyer's office to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the county. Just wait and see.
Their word against his. Meanwhile, the legal sheets have already hit the fan at the Hawaii Housing Authority, where Bernard K. Sagawa, a public housing specialist, is being sued by 13 women for sexual harassment and assault over a 15-year period. If found to be true, this is a seedy tale of a state housing inspector who abused his power, and a government bureaucracy that closed its eyes.
According to the lawsuits, Sagawa touched or fondled dozens of Big Island women while doing housing inspections, made inappropriate sexual comments, entered homes unannounced and solicited sex. Furthermore, when these women's allegations were brought to the attention of the HHA hierarchy, it said nothing could be done because it was "their word against his."
THEIR word? Their, as in plural? Could so many women have made this up? Didn't the fact that one of Sagawa's associates received anywhere from 18 to two dozen complaints about her co-worker merit further investigation on the part of HHA?
Apparently not. Obviously, it's easier to pretend that nothing has gone awry or, if it eventually does, to deny any role in the fiasco. Unfortunately for the victims in these two Big Island cases, however, the culprits are clear.
There's good and bad news. We can vote for or against presidential candidates come November. But, in Hawaii, we're stuck with most of our "don't-look-at-me" government officials, some of whom are in serious denial.