COUNCILMAN Steve Holmes apparently didn't learn anything from that highway incident in which a busybody, off-duty cop ended up being thrown off the viaduct to his death by a high school kid during a scuffle. Holmes lucky
he didn’t get snuffedOr maybe he did. Holmes, the self-appointed and only member of the Honolulu City Council No-Smoking Enforcement Branch, recently de-cigaretted a teenage girl at a bus stop because she had the audacity to allow her secondhand smoke to seep into his sovereign air space.
Holmes must have known better than to try that stunt with a teenage boy or, for that matter, a grown man. The No. 1 rule of self-appointed policing practices is make sure that you pick on people smaller than you, preferably girls.
The 17-year-old girl claims that Holmes slapped her. The incident is under investigation and could end up before the city prosecutor for possible action. That could be interesting.
Imagine. City prosecutor Peter Carlisle, who -- armed with a golf club -- once went to the rescue of a woman who was being dragged by some guy in a car, will have to decide if Holmes was right in his "cig-arrest."
Holmes says he didn't slap the girl, he just took the cigarette. Other than the possible assault charge, it really doesn't matter. The fact is, when faced with a situation that bothered only him, he chose not to walk away, but to instigate action. This was stupid on a number of levels.
It is most obviously stupid because there is no law against smoking outdoors and if the smoke bothered him, he should have just moved away. If she was breaking a law, he should have called the cops.
It was even more stupid because he had no way of knowing whether the girl had a gun or a knife. How did he know that the girl's father, brother or boyfriend wasn't just around the corner ready to beat him to a pulp? It was only a few weeks ago that a military officer was shot to death in Waianae simply for trying to get some punks to shut up and get off the lanai of his vacation cabin.
Luckily for Holmes, the girl behaved like an adult and simply reported the incident to the police instead of taking matters into her own hands.
Most importantly, the incident shows how fanatical certain members of the anti-smoking crowd have become. It's not enough that they want to ban smoking in all public places. Holmes' action is an indication of the type of police-state mentality that permeates these self-righteous, self-appointed protectors of the public health.
THE thing about secondhand smoke is that there still is some question of whether it actually causes cancer and, if so, to what degree. A federal judge recently ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency's 1993 study showing the connection was flawed. It is this study that local governments around the country are using to ban smoking.
There's a big difference between a waitress having to inhale secondhand smoke for eight hours in a restaurant and a city councilman picking up a whiff of smoke at a bus stop. Even if the teenager had blown a lung-full of smoke into Holmes' face, that would merely be rude, not necessarily a health hazard. In fact, the bus exhaust was probably more dangerous than the girl's cigarette smoke.
All of that doesn't matter. What does matter here is that Holmes had absolutely no right to touch this 17-year-old girl in a public place. (Unless he made a Bruce Lee precision slap for the cigarette, I assume his hand had to have at least brushed her face.)
I just can't help but wonder if Holmes would have taken similar action against a 6-foot-2, 255-pound tree trimmer. I don't think so.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
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71224.113@compuserve.com.
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