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It sounds like some proactive measures could be taken to reduce the impact of the criminal activity. A perimeter fence and gate might discourage some intruders. A perimeter security system seems like a must item, since you never want to be woken up with an intruder standing in your bedroom threatening you. The alarm system would wake you up and give you time to react to the situation. Locking your home is a no-brainer.
It seems that having a concealed tracking device installed on your car would be a good idea. You would then be prepared in case your car was stolen to track it's location. I know someone who recovered their i-phone that was stolen with the i-phone's built-in tracking.
Since the response time of the police is too slow, you have to be prepared to defend yourself. How are citizens in Hawaii treated by the police and court system when they are threatened by an intruder, then shoot and kill the intruder? Some people are simply walking crime sprees and offer no value to society. Society as a whole would be better off without them. The criminal's lives don't matter, in my view.
Location: not sure, but there's a hell of a lot of water around here!
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Originally Posted by davephan
Since the response time of the police is too slow, you have to be prepared to defend yourself. How are citizens in Hawaii treated by the police and court system when they are threatened by an intruder, then shoot and kill the intruder? Some people are simply walking crime sprees and offer no value to society. Society as a whole would be better off without them. The criminal's lives don't matter, in my view.
If someone breaks into your home late at night, or at any time, threatens you with bodily harm, beats you up, could torture you and kill you, then you should simply beg them not to do that, or allow them to do that, plus take all your possessions? At that moment in time, you have to react to the situation. You could be killed in seconds, or permanently injured for the rest of your life, long before the police have time to arrive.
All people are not the same. There is a population of criminals who do not care if they inflict pain on their victims. They even think it is funny. They think they have the right to hurt other people, to steal their possessions, and you should have no rights to stop them. They think they should be coddled by society and are coddled by many people in society.
We had a recent example of a career criminal who has no regard for anyone. A 78 year old man set his bag of groceries down so he could purchase a light rail ticket in St Paul. After he purchased the ticket from the vending machine, he noticed his bag of groceries was gone. He discovered a 51 year old Caucasian man took the bag of groceries. The 78 year old man confronted the criminal. The criminal slammed the old man against a store window and started punching and beating him. The criminal told the old man that "this is not your day, the groceries are mine now", and threatened to throw the old man onto the light rail tracks so he would be run over by a train and killed. No police were around, but bystanders saw the situation, came to help the old man, and the criminal ran off. Later, the criminal was caught by the police. The criminal swore at the police and told them that they can't arrest him. He was arrested and went to jail. It turned out the criminal has caused a lot of problems around the light rail stations and has a lengthy rap sheet. Fortunately, the old man was not killed by the criminal, but the old man's life has been permanently changed. This is just one small example of a criminal that has no regard for anyone else or their property. Some people in society want to try to coddle and 'understand' the criminal. The criminal just laughs at the coddling fools and commits more crimes as soon as he gets out of jail.
I suppose thinking career criminals in society are different, and should be treated differently from lawabiding might be scary to people in society that insist on coddling criminals, or it might be scary to the career criminals themselves who think it is their right to commit crimes with impunity.
Doubtful that a real estate agent will give that info because it talks a person out of a sale. If you are building and hire a contractor or project manager then that would be a better bet for getting the real 'scoop'. Forums like these do a good job too.
I've found that most realtors aren't up front on the actual issues of a property unless they're held by law to do so. There are some good ones, but many are either not educated on the areas they're selling in or they're negligent in being up front about the challenges.
Kona is getting slammed too though... It's not just the Kau/Puna/Hilo areas. Vehicles getting stolen from hunting parking areas, Federal parking areas, businesses, Kona to Kau, Kau to Hilo...
It's a multi-leveled problem, but certainly one of the most failing pieces of the puzzle are the low bails, failure to fully prosecute, and the revolving door of the 'justice system' that just puts the perps back out on the streets with barely a slap. The police response has stepped up majorly in recent months. But it's frustrating for them as well when they have to call off on a police chase because the thief starts driving erratically, or they catch the jerk and then the courts let him out within a short amount of time so they have to keep arresting him ad nauseum...
Check out Big Island Thieves or Big Island Stolen Rides to name a couple of areas to keep up on recent thefts.
Hawaii laws are very definitely against a person defending themselves with a gun, even if someone comes into your house uninvited with a weapon (not a gun). Personally, I'll take my turn with the courts in that situation, because if I feel someone is an immediate, severe threat to myself or my family, then my obligation is to disable that threat by any means necessary and deal with mere potential threats later.
It sounds sadly like if your a criminal this is the place to come to, due to the soft court system. I guess that will be the new normal until the legal systems puts some teeth into the court cases . Not exactly billboard material for realtors/housing industry. I thought it was just the schools, the high costs of food and electricity and home prices were the main draw backs. Geez
It sounds sadly like if your a criminal this is the place to come to, due to the soft court system. I guess that will be the new normal until the legal systems puts some teeth into the court cases . Not exactly billboard material for realtors/housing industry. I thought it was just the schools, the high costs of food and electricity and home prices were the main draw backs. Geez
From all I read and hear about living on the Big Island, I think unless you're born and raised there, very few would find it to be paradise.
Places like this with rampant crime and little to no police presence need to have laws that support a person in their own home protecting themselves by any means necessary. Here in Oregon, especially rural Oregon, we rarely hear of B&E's because most people own firearms for protection and hunting and the criminals know it.
The root causes of crime are poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of housing, and the war on drugs, not too few guns so that people can murder their kids coming home late at night or too short sentences so that people don't become even worse from non-rehabilitative jails. Hopefully something could be done about the root problems.
Doubtful that a real estate agent will give that info because it talks a person out of a sale. If you are building and hire a contractor or project manager then that would be a better bet for getting the real 'scoop'. Forums like these do a good job too.
I've found that most realtors aren't up front on the actual issues of a property unless they're held by law to do so. There are some good ones, but many are either not educated on the areas they're selling in or they're negligent in being up front about the challenges.
Not sure about Hawaii regulations, but in Florida real estate agents were cautioned about talking about neighborhood crime issues for fear of being accused of "steering" clients, usually with a racial bias. In the past, the phrases "good neighborhood" and "bad neighborhood" were all too often realtor-speak for "all/mostly white" vs "mostly minorities". Now, if you ask an agent about crime etc you would mostly likely be directed to the local police.
A realtor would be the last person to talk to about this sort of thing, for the obvious reason....conflict of interest. They want to sell you something, It's good to see these issues FINALLY being talked about on this forum. I'm certainly a nervous nellie when it comes to crime and what is happening on the Big Island, but it seems out of control to me too, and we're all the way over in Florida. City Boosters have soft pedaled this for too long, and now that it's something that just can't be swept under the rug any longer, we need to look at what can be done, if anything.
The crime problem on the B.I may keep us from coming back to a place where we felt like we belonged. As liberals living in Florida, which is not a pleasant experience, and as people that don't have tons of money, maybe we just can't go home again, as the book says. Home has changed. The problem is that the lenient criminal justice system and good old boy politics of Hawaii have brought all this on. Judge Glenn Hara in particular has been handing out laughably light sentences for major crimes for far too long, and the mayor needs to stay out of strip clubs, or whatever you want to call them, and start doing his job. The county council is in some ways worse than him. But this isn't going to change within my lifetime, as the problems are just too deeply imbedded in the culture.
Like a friend once said of Hilo, we pay a price to live here. 12 years ago the price was not really worth it to us I suppose, or we would have never left. Now that we're thinking of returning, maybe once again the price to live there is going to invoke too many compromises on what we consider to be vital quality of life issues. Living out the last of our days in Florida seems like some sort of protracted death sentence to me. Never mind the money, as this is a cheap place to live compared to Hawaii. When your heart and spirit are continually ripped apart by an uncaring, uncompassionate Republican environment, it's just a matter of time before the body and mind start to die. I've always said that poverty of money is not so bad, but poverty of mind and spirit are the real killers. You can always get more money, to a certain degree. But when defeat begins to creep inside, watch out.
I wish there was a solution to what is happening on the B.I., but I just don't see one unless you either live w/ your head in the sand as so many people have chosen to do, or get enough money to sorta insulate yourself from the problems at hand. Activism and politics can only effect so much. Fighting the good fight wears you out when the odds are that nothing will change. Maybe carving out a little corner of the universe that feels OK, and surrounding yourself w/ a support network of like minded people is about all we can do in the short term.
Vaedram, you are correct, but let us not forget racism, the topic which people walk lightly around in Hawaii. It's the elephant in the room that has grown so large that it can't be ignored any longer. As for guns, they really don't kill people, people kill people. I can kill someone w/ a rock or even my bare hands if necessary, but I probably never would because I'm the peaceful sort. And yet, if my life or the lives of my family were threatened, you do what you need to do. If society's criminal justice system and police cannot protect me (and more and more it's evident that if your skin is dark, they not only won't protect you, they just might kill you w/ no consequences to themselves), then a gun is protection. Who really cares what is legal in Hawaii, or anywhere else for that matter? For many years it was legal to own another living human in this country, the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny was legal, and on and on. I am very aware of the difference between what is legal and what is just and right.
Last edited by smarino; 09-19-2015 at 03:36 AM..
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