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Police chief says
no to monkeys

A few days after suggesting in a column that the Honolulu Police Department should consider using trained monkeys on the force as the Mesa, Ariz., police department is trying to do, I got a phone call from HPD Chief Boisse Correa. Now, in my line of work, it's not always a good thing to get a personal call from police chiefs or organized crime hitmen. Actually, very few people in general tend to call up humor columnists with tidings of great joy. So I naturally was a little curious as to why the chief wanted to chat. Could it be that he didn't share my view that monkeys could be an asset to HPD? Was he offended at my suggestion that HPD is committing animal discrimination by only using dogs and horses? Or did he simply need some guidance on important police affairs?

The answer was that he merely wanted to thank me for my input on the monkey idea and said that while using trained monkeys for police work does make some sense, he doesn't see it happening soon at HPD.

"There's always been research in using animals to do different things, back to World War I," he said.

Pigeons, he pointed out, were the e-mail of the day, carrying messages long distances. Horses became part of law enforcement, he pointed out, when it was discovered that they weren't effected by tear gas.

Stifling an enthusiastic yawn, I attempted to guide the conversation back to monkeys and how they'd be great for climbing up the sides of buildings and peering into criminals' rooms with little video cameras Velcro-ed to their heads, but he was fairly adamant that monkeys weren't going to be joining the thin blue line anytime soon.

I HAVE A LOT of respect for Chief Correa and in fact have known him since he was a lowly lieutenant just back from Micronesia where he was considered the law way, way, way west of the Pecos. He recalled fondly that, while head of public safety on the island Truk, there actually were assassination attempts made against him by islanders not particularly interested in the 6-foot-6 lawman's police efforts. He said nothing about monkeys on Truk and whether they engaged in any police-type activities.

The chief then told me about all the good that HPD's police dogs are doing but, frankly, I think the dogs get way too much press. I was about to push him to diversify the HPD animal contingent to include pigs, cows and fighting roosters, but he said something like, "Hey, look at the time!" and rung off. Oh, well, next time.