‘Five-O’ Makes HPD Look Incompetent
The main script line for Sgt. Duke Lukela (played by Dennis Chun) is, ‘OK, Steve, whatever you say.’
CBS PHOTO
(Historical Note: MidWeek was four years away from its birth when the first Hawaii 5-0 — originally to be titled The Man — finished its 12-year run. The show was based on a real police unit that existed here in the 1940s.)
To HPD Chief Louis Kealoha:
Shouldn’t you consider making the new Hawaii Five-0 give your police a smarter role as a condition for your continued support of the series with your men, women and vehicles?
If I were a Mainlander, I’d think HPD is incompetent at doing much more than issuing traffic tickets while the Five-0 troopers do all the intelligence gathering, shoot-outs with criminals, and shouting “clear” every time they search a house.
I briefly felt good when Chi McBride joined the show as the HPD/SWAT captain who read the riot act to the Five-0 foursome for acting like no-rules cowboys who regularly slugged suspects handcuffed to a chair in that blue-tinted interrogation room. (Why is it always blue-tinted?)
Then McBride (as character Lou Grover) started getting more chummy and accepting of McGarrett’s ways. Finally, he was fired for acceding to the demands of murderous kidnappers of his daughter. But Five-0 has hired him as one of its own. So I guess we’ll now have five cowboys.
Five-0 seldom asks HPD for help taking on gangs of criminals armed with automatic weapons and barricaded in warehouses. Steve, Danno, Kono and Chin Ho don’t need no cops to bring criminals to justice!
It’s demeaning for HPD. Remember when a gang took hostages in the Judiciary Building? All HPD was allowed to do was keep the crowd back about 20 feet from the front door.
The scripts are screwy in that regard. Embarrassing is a better word.
The U.S. Defense Department carefully vets movie and TV scripts for how our armed forces are portrayed before it agrees to lend land, people or equipment to a production. That’s not censorship. Five-0 can go it alone if it thinks so.
So, Chief, how about going to bat with a little more muscle for your talented cops?
The show needs your cooperation. Get something in return. It’s not going to pull out of Hawaii because it’s not getting HPD to roll over and play dead.
* The person elected Hawaii U.S. Senator on Nov. 4 will be a Democrat. That’s a political fact of life. But which one? Brian Schatz or Colleen Hanabusa?
For most who will vote Democrat in the Primary Aug. 9, it’s largely been which governor’s endorsement moved you. Otherwise, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Two progressives, very smart, very accomplished public lives.
Then last week in the KITV debate Schatz stepped in the gooey stuff.
Are GMO foods safe? Should there be local laws restricting them? Hanabusa said science shows them to be safe and that local laws would create farming chaos.
Schatz didn’t mention safety but strongly supported local GMO laws. That means local laws trumping federal. And if that’s his belief, it puts him on the side of those also favoring local decision-making on abortion and who can marry. You can’t have half a loaf of federalism.
So, suddenly something more than Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.
* Why does anyone care if a Honolulu police officer has a visible tattoo?
I’d say obviously inappropriate visible tattoos are a no-no. But most are harmless self-expression.
I’d like to see this one end up in the U.S. Supreme Court as a First Amendment case.
* We all can see where this “Hawaiian sovereignty” thing is headed: nowhere. No kingdom. No state within a state. No tribal status.
We’ll continue to be the State of Hawaii with some federal programs earmarked for those with a measure of Hawaiian blood. Nothing more.
* Oops, my bad. Ben Cayetano’s campaign didn’t transfer illegal contributions from his governor years to his mayoral race. But … it didn’t expeditiously return those funds to the state either. It kept them well after the election through a legal loophole.
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