Police should respond
to car-racing dangerThe issue: Police plan a crackdown
on car-racing on Oahu's roadways in
the aftermath of a traffic fatality
allegedly caused by racing.
RACING cars on Hawaii's freeways is dangerous, as the predawn Sunday death of Elizabeth Kekoa demonstrated, and should be treated as a serious crime. Speeding tickets do not suffice as penalties for drivers of souped-up cars who put other motorists at mortal risk through their potentially lethal form of entertainment. If current laws fail to prevent this activity, new laws may be needed.Kekoa, a 58-year-old Holy Trinity School teacher, was killed when her minivan was struck by a Honda Prelude driven by Nicholas Tudisco, 18, on the H-1 freeway between the South King Street and 6th Avenue off-ramps. Police say Tudisco's car was traveling up to 100 mph when it collided with the minivan. Kekoa's husband and mother were seriously injured in the collision.
Witnesses told police that they saw at least two vehicles racing prior to the collision. Other vehicles, possibly owned by members of a racing club, blocked traffic along the freeway, apparently to accommodate the race.
In most cases involving traffic deaths, the driver at fault is charged with negligent homicide, a felony that carries a prison sentence of up to five years. In more heinous cases, charges of manslaughter are more appropriate, connoting reckless behavior and punishable by a prison term of up to 20 years. (Prosecutors, reacting to media frenzy, foolishly charged Bucky Lake with murder for a five-fatality collision in 1988, but a jury sensibly returned manslaughter convictions.)
In the Tudisco case, City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said he is considering charging others -- perhaps the driver of the car Tudisco was racing against and drivers of the cars blocking traffic -- as accomplices. Under the law, accomplices are subject to the same maximum penalty as the principal defendant. An intense police investigation aimed at identifying those accomplices is an absolute necessity.
Law-enforcement authorities should not stop there. Police need to follow through on their belated promise of a crackdown on street racers, employing several police divisions and a helicopter to spot racers. Where appropriate, prosecutors should charge those caught racing at dangerous speeds with reckless endangering, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
"We want to stop a lot of this activity before it starts," said Maj. Robert Prasser, the head of the Honolulu Police Department's traffic division. "If people can get off the road and give us a call we will respond."
Public trust is betrayed
when politicians lieThe issue: Politicians attempt to
untangle the webs of deception.
The sharp edge of cynicism that cuts through America is honed every time a public figure is caught doing wrong and then lies about it. Talk on the street and at the water cooler reflects the low expectations people have of politicians and government officials. Even so, that cynicism stirs a deep yearning for honesty and strength of character in those who seek to lead. These ideals should not be abandoned.The latest episodes of parsing and spinning come from Honolulu City Council member Jon Yoshimura and California Congressman Gary Condit, both of whom through public statements have fueled perceptions of hypocrisy more than squelching them.
Yoshimura, two years after the fact, admitted that he lied when he said he had not been drinking before a minor accident in 1999. He said setting the story straight was an effort to "do the right thing," but he can hardly expect a skeptical public to believe that his coming clean had nothing to do with his ambition to become lieutenant governor. His admission of a "poor-driving mistake," that he really didn't know he hit another car and that he didn't tell police he had been drinking because he wasn't asked all sound like hedging the truth.
Yoshimura should have recognized the bad example of Gary Condit, whose orchestrated media campaign to manage the news about his relationship with missing intern Chandra Levy completely bombed. Condit, after months of silence, lined up television and magazine interviews, ostensibly to tell his side of the story. Instead, he bobbed and weaved, evading questions with rehearsed half-truths. Condit railed against the news media and attempted to elicit sympathy by recounting how the attention had hurt his family, ignoring all the while his own culpability in the fiasco.
No one -- neither president nor city councilman -- is invulnerable to the weaknesses of human nature. However, those in whom the public puts its trust bear a special responsibility to be worthy when they seek public office. If they do not, the consequences will be disappointment and disgust with the political system.
While their troubles are vastly different, the problem Condit and Yoshimura share is trying to hide the truth. Yoshimura says he has learned a lesson. "I think the fact that I withheld information really made the situation a lot worse than it should have been," he said. He is right about that. People forgive and forget mistakes. Lies are long remembered.
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 529-4791; fbridgewater@starbulletin.com
Michael Rovner, assistant managing editor 529-4768; mrovner@starbulletin.com
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