Editorials
Tuesday, March 27, 2001

Dormant crime cameras
should have been fixed

The issue: The city failed to
reconnect police surveillance
cameras in Chinatown after
police moved to a new substation
nearly a year ago.

POLICE SURVEILLANCE cameras that were installed on the streets of Chinatown three years ago were intended to be a deterrent to crimes such as drug trafficking, prostitution and purse-snatching. The deterrent worked.

The fear of police zooming in on a crime undoubtedly discouraged many would-be offenders -- at least those who were unaware that most of the cameras haven't been operating for nearly a year.

Thus, the city's delay in fixing the system has been inexcusably long and wasteful. What appears to have been a bureaucratic snafu might have prevented homicide police from acting quickly to arrest the suspect in a Feb. 28 assault. Although no camera was aimed directly at the site of the strangling death of a woman in front of the Ross Store on Fort Street Mall, police acknowledged to the Star-Bulletin's Leila Fujimori that a nearby camera "had it been working" could have caught the suspect fleeing from the scene.

In a pilot project, the city installed 14 cameras in Chinatown and six in Waikiki in late 1998 at a cost of $3,000 a camera. A dozen more cameras were installed later during a renovation project.

The cameras were connected to a police substation at the corner of South Hotel Street and Nuuanu Avenue, where videotaped scenes could be viewed by officers. The problem is that when police moved two blocks to a new substation at North Hotel and Maunakea streets last May, the cameras were not adequately reconnected. The 12 additional cameras have been strictly ornamental from the time they were installed.

Rae Loui, director of the city's Department of Design and Construction, said the city has lacked the money to reconnect the old cameras and connect the new ones. The city awarded a $254,000 maintenance contract last week to Siu's Electric Corp. to make the connections.

"Although it's taken longer, we're ending up with a better system," Loui said, but that is an overly cheerful retrospective. Allowing expensive and perfectly adequate video equipment to sit idle because it would cost money to hook it up makes no sense.

Targets of the video system may have been aware that it had become dormant. "I questioned why there was a proliferation of drug trafficking" after the police moved to the new station, says former Downtown Neighborhood Board chairman Burton White, general manager of the Hawaii Theatre Center. "What had changed?"

If crime had not increased after the move, we might have suggested replacing the expensive cameras with cheap, plastic imitations. Criminals obviously can tell not only real cameras from toys, but those that are operating from those that aren't.

---

Expect a fight over
review of U.S. defenses

The issue: Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld has initiated
a sweeping review of U.S. defenses.

President Bush's Secretary of Defense appears to have gotten off to a good start in a long overdue reassessment of the nation's defense establishment and military forces. From what has been seen so far, however, it is not clear that he has gone far enough. Given the history of earlier assessments, moreover, it is also not clear that the secretary will be able to escape the ambushes aimed at halting or at least diluting his reforms. The military services have already raised warning flags and defense contractors can be expected to fight tooth and nail to preserve their programs. Members of Congress will scramble to protect bases and defense plants -- and jobs -- in their districts, with little regard for the national interest.

From what has filtered out of Washington through the press and the Internet, it does seem that Rumsfeld and his close associates have come to realize that the greater challenges to American national interests will be in the Pacific and Asia.

It's about time. Since the end of World War II, the United States has fought in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, and has been engaged in other skirmishes and near wars. But a good part of the Defense Department is still focused on Europe as if the Russians will pour through the Fulda Gap into Germany any day now.

Critical to success of the Rumsfeld review will be asking the right questions, the most important of which is to identify the real threats to the United States and American national interests. Too often in the past, reviews have done little but find compromises as to whether the nation should spend more on long-range bombers or aircraft carriers.

Then the questions are what missions are to be assigned to the armed forces? Defending the nation and meeting treaty obligations to allies are easy. But are operations such as humanitarian intervention, battling pirates and running down drug smugglers jobs for the armed forces or for law enforcement agencies? The answers so far have not been clear.

Having determined those missions, the next question is: Does the United States have the right forces in size, arms, organization, training, and deployment to execute missions assigned? Almost certainly the answer will be no. The list could easily go on.

Suffice for the moment that a start has been made. Let's hope it fulfills its promise.

---

Published by Oahu Publications Inc., a subsidiary of Black Press.

Don Kendall, President

John Flanagan, publisher and editor in chief 529-4748; jflanagan@starbulletin.com
Frank Bridgewater, managing editor 529-4747; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, assistant managing editor 529-4751; mrovner@starbulletin.com
Lucy Young-Oda, assistant managing editor 529-4751; lyoungoda@starbulletin.com
Richard Halloran, editorial director 529-4790; rhalloran@starbulletin.com
Ed Lynch, city editor 529-4758; elynch@starbulletin.com
Nadine Kam, features editor 529-4759; nkam@starbulletin.com
Stephanie Kendrick, business editor 529-4757; skendrick@starbulletin.com
Cindy Luis, sports editor 529-4782; cluis@starbulletin.com
Dean Sensui, photo editor 529-4791; dsensui@starbulletin.com
Blaine Fergerstrom, webmaster 529-4840; bfergerstrom@starbulletin.com

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