For three days at the end of May, no one in Puna slept easily. Three elderly men had been found dead at their homes, and the man the police were hunting was somewhere in the bush — out in the lava fields and jungle of a district where many people still leave their doors unlocked.
Officers fanned out across the rock and brush. Their neighbors stayed inside and waited. The question hanging over those days was an old one: when a man like that is loose, who goes out after him?
For most of human history the answer came from the village. Fear of a killer produced the posse — the men who decided they would handle it. We have spent centuries taking that work away from the frightened and giving it to the trained and the accountable.
Late one night at the end of May, on Oʻahu, a crowd of young men was beating a 15-year-old at a North Shore beach that locals call Dead Man’s Curve.
A lifeguard named Kekoa Tamale waded in to pull the boy out and was badly hurt for it. But he was no stranger to the violence. By his own account, he’d been in a fight with some of the same group earlier in the night, and the boy was a family friend.
Private violence works like that. It pulls everyone into the tangle and leaves no one with clean hands. A defense lawyer has already predicted that some of the crowd will say they were acting to protect someone else.
The courts will now do what those on the beach could not: weigh each set of actions on its own, and answer the violence with something other than more violence.
In Puna, the manhunt ended without a shot. A resident phoned in a tip, officers found the man they wanted in a small cave, and they took him alive. Jacob Daniel Baker was accused of murdering three elderly men in his community, yet he walked out of that bush breathing. The sword was unsheathed, but it did not draw blood.
On Kauaʻi, police hunted William “Billy” Sinclair, a murder suspect who neighbors say had also shot at passing cars. Police told residents of Kīlauea and Kapaʻa to stay inside, lock the doors, and let him be. Do not go looking. Do not approach. Someone else will walk toward the gunfire so the rest of us need not, and we have trained and disciplined them to do this.
Yesterday, the two-day manhunt ended with Sinclair swimming offshore of the Kapaʻa Public Library, clutching a rescue tube, ringed by officers along the shore. A boat and jet-ski were on the way to take him in.
The rescue tube had been given to him by police to help him in the rough waters. Even though Sinclair was suspected of ending a life, police worked to save his. After helping him onto the boat, an officer handcuffed him, then hugged him and handed him a bottle of water.
There are two ways to get this wrong. One is to imagine the sword can simply be set down — that the right program or counselor could have saved a man before he ever pulls the trigger or murders anyone. This is naive. Since Cain, man has suffered violence at the hands of man. While some may benefit from social work, others refuse reformation and pose a threat to all.
The other mistake is to snatch the sword up ourselves. The violence is answered by a mob. The accused murderer is hanged without a trial. And each act of violence invites the next.
Between these extremes stands our solution: men and women permitted to use force, bound by the law, and accountable to the public. When chaos is on the loose, they are the ones we send out to rein it in.
So let the gratitude be plain, because it is owed. To the officers who went into the Puna bush after a man accused of three killings and carried him out alive. To the ones who threw a rescue tube to a man suspected of murder. To all those who risk themselves to preserve order for others. Thank you for keeping our communities safe.
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Author Sterling Higa can be reached at hello@sterlinghiga.com.
