Honolulu Lite
Police shootouts appear
to be Hawaii’s form of
capital punishmentFor a state that doesn't have capital punishment, Hawaii sure executes a lot of criminals. Maybe execution is the wrong word. Is it an execution when the condemned criminal shoots at police first? Or is it suicide?
Whatever it is, it happened two Fridays ago when a career criminal named Arnold Willets, in a severe tactical error while fleeing from police, decided to fire a shotgun at them.
Willets obviously was no student of Hawaii law-enforcement history or he would have known that few people ever shoot at a Honolulu police officer and live to tell about it. Honolulu police are sort of hard-core about being shot at. They won't tolerate it. Check the record. It's a long one. It can be basically summed up in this way: You shoot at an HPD officer and you are so pau, brah.
On that Friday afternoon, after the air was no longer filled with flying lead, Willets was dead, his passenger had been hit several times, a 2-year-old boy had been chucked out the window to safety and the truck looked like something out of the Bonnie and Clyde Getaway Car Museum and Swiss Cheese Factory.
Willets fired his shotgun at police three times. Officers fired back more than 100 times. That technically may not constitute an execution, but it comes pretty close.
But, hey, there's nothing wrong with executions. Lots of states have them on purpose. Texas executes criminals all the time. It'd be interesting to see who has more notches on their belt: HPD or the Texas prisons.
This is not a criticism of the Honolulu police. If someone pointed a gun at me and I had a gun, I'd shoot. Unless the guy pointing the gun at me was a Honolulu police officer. Then I'd lie on the ground and cry like a baby, begging to live.
So, this isn't criticism. It's just an observation: Honolulu police kill a lot of people. And because they do, maybe we should take another look at capital punishment, official state-sponsored executions. At least we'd be able to execute people in a more controlled environment. We wouldn't have to depend on high-speed gunfights on the highways where innocent people are put at severe risk of being stuck in traffic for several hours.
THE DECEASED felon, Willets, was supposed to be in prison. He had been sentenced to prison for his part in the kidnapping and murder of a 16-year-old boy. Hawaii judges don't like to keep dangerous criminals in prison. I used to think it was because the judges were soft on crime.
Now I see a more sinister aspect to it. I think these judges are frustrated that there is no capital punishment in Hawaii. So instead of allowing criminals live a long cushy life behind bars, the judges "let" them back on the streets, knowing their days are numbered.
Don't be surprised if Willets' family sues the state on the grounds that his early release from prison actually was a death sentence.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com