Honolulu Lite
When I mentioned to a few friends that police were hunting for the person who recently gunned down a man with 81 arrests, one of them said, 'Why? Do they want to give the gunman a medal?" 492 strikes and you’re out
That's the kind of crass statement you'll never find me making in this space. One shouldn't speak ill of the dead, even if the dead was a career criminal who had more breaks than Evel Knievel's fibulas.
When Earl Hirakawa was shot to death early one morning in a car on Vineyard Boulevard, apparently by another motorist, he was on parole for burglary, attempted assault and other crimes. He was working as, of all things, a security guard.
How a security guard company could hire a criminal with more than 80 arrests and more than 30 convictions is just a little more perplexing than the question "Why was Hirakawa on the streets in the first place?"
I believe in second chances, maybe even third chances. But around the 30th or 40th time this guy was busted, shouldn't a judge have sat up and said, "Say, I don't think the system is getting through to this fellow. Every time we let him go free, he preys on other innocent people. We better keep him locked up."
Maybe I'm being too hard on the judges and the parole board. Maybe Hirakawa deserved a 45th, 46th and 47th chance. But come on, after his 70th arrest or 25th conviction, someone should have welded the cell door closed, if not for the safety of innocent civilians, then obviously for Hirakawa's own good.
The only difference between this case and the long line of others that are so similar in Hawaii is that Hirakawa became a victim. Generally, those who benefit from Hawaii's "492 Strikes and You're Out" laws are predators who keep on killing, raping and robbing.
We don't know exactly what led to Hirakawa's death. Perhaps he had finally gone straight and was the greatest security guard in the state. But it's kind of hard to ignore history, especially a history as well documented as Hirakawa's. And history would tend to suggest that a career criminal involved in a midnight running gunbattle on the streets probably wasn't on his way home from locking up a church or feeding the homeless.
What really matters is that this is another striking example of how our criminal justice system favors criminals over justice. Think about this: Hirakawa had 81 arrests since he was 18 years old. (Juvenile records are sealed, so we don't know whether he was busted as a kid.) He was 40 when he died. That means that he had 81 arrests in 22 years, or nearly 4 arrests per year. He had 31 convictions, or at least one conviction a year.
I would have liked to have sat in on the parole board hearings near the end. ("Now Earl, we've given you 30 chances to clean up your act. If we let you out of prison again, do you promise, promise, promise not to rob and assault people? And go to bed early? And not get involved with people who shoot guns at you early in the morning? You do? OK. See ya.")
I feel bad for the family who lost someone they loved. Hirakawa's death is a tragedy for them. But his life of second chances exposes our justice system as a travesty.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com