Editorials
Saturday, July 10, 1999Liquor laws may
need more scrutinyTHE Honolulu Liquor Commission has a difficult job, especially when it comes to policing the rules in Oahu's hostess bars and strip clubs. Many of these places have look-outs posted at the door who know the cars and faces of longtime liquor inspectors. If illicit shenanigans are going on in these establishments, employees inside are signaled to cool it while the Liquor Commission employee is on the prowl. When the official leaves, the violations may resume.The issue: City Councilman Andy Mirikitani is criticizing the Honolulu Liquor commission for not effectively enforcing the county's liquor laws, based on a complaint and surreptitiously filmed video supplied by a strip-club owner.
This ineffective means of patrolling these adult hangouts may be partly responsible for the dramatic drop in Liquor Commission fines -- down from over $600,000 in 1996 to only $150,000 in the last fiscal year. Also, there has been a "precipitous drop in license revocations for repeat violators," according to Honolulu City Councilman Andy Mirikitani.
Now Warren Colazzo, owner of a Kapiolani strip club called Babes in Paradise, has shared with Mirikitani and the media a copy of a hidden-camera video taken by a local private investigator. The two-hour tape allegedly shows flagrant violations by strippers, club patrons and others in notorious Honolulu adult clubs. Colazzo hired the investigator to prove that the Liquor Commission is not stringently enforcing the law when it comes to his competitors, while being extra diligent in policing his bring-your-own-booze establishment.
Granted, Colazzo may have an ax to grind and the Liquor Commission could be doing the best it can under its budgetary and staffing constraints, according to Wally Weatherwax, liquor law administrator.
If so, Mirikitani's suggestion that the department team up with city prosecutor and police forces to find new ways to enhance its enforcement could be helpful to Weatherwax and staff. Oahu's tawdry adult businesses certainly have the right to operate, but not if they are blatantly and repeatedly breaking the law.
A defensive Weatherwax said during the hearing that the commission is not "particularly interested in providing Mr. Colazzo a level playing field." Why not? Consistent enforcement is only fair and certainly mandated in an industry that may be rife with violations, as Colazzo says the videotape shows. His outrage over the double standard that exists at the Liquor Commission deserves to be investigated and possibly improved by a task force.
Don’t broaden realm
of hate-crime lawsCRIMES caused by hatred based on human differences are perhaps more troubling than those inspired by economic gain, but they are not new and deserve no special treatment. Once Congress tried to begin creating categories of hate crimes, it opened a Pandora's box.
Current law makes it a federal crime to commit an offense because of hatred based on race, color, religion or national origin. Bills introduced in Congress and supported by the Clinton administration would expand the law to include crimes motivated by sex, sexual orientation and disability.
"The federal government can't continue to sit on the sidelines. With each new problem, it becomes more and more difficult for Congress to claim there's no problem," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., co-sponsor of one of the bills. Richard Socarides, President Clinton's civil rights adviser, chimed in: "With each publicized incident more and more pressure is put on the opposition and those who say that this is not a problem."
Are Kennedy and Socarides referring to the Fourth of July shooting spree of Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, the 21-year-old white supremacist who killed himself after shooting at blacks, Jews and Asians, killing two and wounding 12 persons in Illinois and Indiana? Smith's rampage was covered under current law since it seemed to be motivated by race and religion.
Or are they referring to the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo.? That 12-fatality massacre apparently was motivated in part by the two teen-aged assailants' resentment of what they thought was favored treatment of student athletes. Is anyone suggesting that athletes be a protected class in hate-crime legislation? Ridiculous.
Most violent crimes are investigated and prosecuted by state or local law-enforcement agencies, as they should be. In addition to expanding the categories of hate-crime victims, Kennedy's bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., would allow the federal government to intervene in cases where they believe the city or state is not adequately pursuing what federal officials perceive to be a hate crime.
The Kennedy-Specter bill also would allow the feds to bring prosecution in an offense with any connection to interstate commerce, such as use of a gun purchased or even manufactured in another state. That means any crime in which a firearm was used in Hawaii, which has no gun-manufacturing plant, could be prosecuted in federal instead of state court.
Unfortunately, Congress does not seem prepared to repeal the hate-crime legislation already on the books. But expanding it to increase federal prosecutorial authority and categories of hate-crimes would made a bad law even worse.
Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited PartnershipRupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
