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It’s bad when the public relations consultant you just paid to help you out of a jam makes it even worse. 

But that’s pretty much what happened last week when details of the Bennet Group’s public relations advice to the Honolulu Police Department became fodder for news columnists. The Honolulu and Civil Beat’s Denby Fawcett found much to laugh at in the “media training guide” produced by Bennet.

Not only was some of the guidance just plain silly (“Reporters look for drama, we look for facts”), but it was frankly insulting to professional journalists (“They think all their questions are brilliant”).

Those are just a couple of fairly stupid points Bennet included in a seven-page training guide, which made the client look even dumber when it was reported that HPD paid more than $100,000 for that advice.

It turns out, according to a cost breakdown Civil Beat columnist Brett Oppegaard requested from HPD, media training was just part of a package of PR tools Bennet provided to HPD over the past year. Also included in the deal was social media training and a review of HPD’s branding, public relations outreach and event-related strategies.

The biggest chunk of the budget — about $52,000 — appears to have gone for “account management and monitoring, including strategic coordination meetings, monitoring, analysis and reporting.”

Still, could Bennet have done a worse job of managing the message about it’s work for HPD?

And that’s too bad, because it’s extremely important that the police department and the community it serves have a solid relationship — preferably a mutual admiration society of sorts based on understanding what each side needs in order to help the other.

A big part of that is trust — the community needs to trust that police officers are, yes, free from the cloud of corruption that is swirling around the HPD but also that things like training and and police practices meet the highest standards. For its part, HPD needs to be able to trust that the community will have its back when it comes to helping solve serious issues like community crime problems or assisting in investigations or standing up for officers in need.

And perhaps the most effective way to develop community trust is to have a good relationship with the local reporters who cover the cops. These are the people who can tell the community about your latest neighborhood crime reduction efforts, what issues you’re facing in recruiting and hiring, how tough it is to be a police officer in a world that believes stories of abuse and brutality rather than give officers in a difficult job the benefit of the doubt.

Don’t blame HPD because it trusted its PR consultant to help it get better PR.

Civil Beat has never been shy about calling out HPD for its shortcomings, but our concerns are almost always related to transparency and disclosure of information we think the public should have a right to scrutinize. Disciplinary files have long been at the top of our list, followed by the need for more transparency around some policing policies like use of force.

And, despite Bennet Group’s silliness when it comes to media training, it seems like we’ve seen HPD move toward more openness with the media since Louis Kealoha vacated the chief’s office earlier this year. Exhibit A is the release of the Bennet Group PR plan in a timely fashion, especially Capt. Rade Vanic’s detailed breakdown of the cost elements that he sent to Oppegaard within days of being asked.

We’d like to see that ice continue to thaw. Here’s an idea to consider:

Why not create a police-media working group similar to the court-media working group that has been meeting quarterly since 2011? The group arose out of issues relating to media access to the courts.

Now, representatives of most news outlets sit down every three months with federal judges, Supreme Court justices and lower court judges along with federal and state Judiciary staff to talk about common concerns. The courts have even hosted a media training day the last couple years that allows journalists — including those on the neighbor islands — to learn more about covering the courts and legal affairs.

There are many ways for the police and the press to learn to trust and respect each other. Sitting down and talking about each sides’ concerns seems like a good starting point.

One thing is for sure: Bennet did HPD — and the public — no favors by making a case to police officials that media is only interested in making the cops look bad.

So don’t blame HPD because it trusted its PR consultant to help it get better PR. But now it’s time to cut out the middleman and learn from each other directly. We’d be thrilled to work with HPD to explore setting up a new working group.